
Glass r_i-^ o 

Book— '4-1 , 



^n 



V 'I 



THE 






GREAT METROPOLIS; 



MIRROR OF NEW YORK. 



A COMPLETE HISTORY OF METROPOLITAN LIFE AND SOCIETY, WITH SKETCHES 

OF PROMINENT PLACES, PERSONS AND THINGS IN THE CITY, 

AS THEY ACTUALLY EXIST. 



T 



BY 



JUNIUS HEI^RI BROWTvTE. 



Issued by SubawripUoa cnljand not for sale in the Book Stores. Reeidenta of any Slate in the Union deBiring a copy 8houH 
ftddreu the Publishers, and an agent will call upon them. 



^xjv 



c HARTFORD: 
AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY. 

R. W. BLISS & CO., TOLEDO, OHIO. BLISS & CO., NEWARK, N. J. 

H, H. BANCROFT & CO., SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 

1869. 



Enterbd according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 

AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO., 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Connecticut. 



.'^82 



TO THE 

GOOD MEN AND THE GOOD "WOMEN 

WHO WALK WITH ChaRITY, 

AND SCATTER THE SUNSHINE OP THEIR PRESENCE IN THE DARK 

WAYS OF THE GrBAT CiTY, 

THIS UNASSUMING RECORD OF ITS LIFE IS 

EARNESTLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 



The sketches in this volume, begun more than two years 
ago, have been continued from time to time in the midst of 
journalistic duties, as personal observation and inquiry 
furnished new facts and illustrations of the Great City. 
These chapters have been written to represent the outer and 
inner life that makes up the beauty and deformity, the good 
and evil, the happiness and misery, which lie around us 
here so closely interwoven, that only charity can judge them 
wisely and well. 

In Faith and Hope the world will disagree, 
But all mankind's concern is Charity. 
All must be false that thwart this one great end, 
And all of God, that bless mankind or mend. 

J. H. B. 
New- York, December, 1868. 



/ 



/ 



ILLUSTEATIOl^S. 



Page 



1. CHURCHES IN NEW YORK, 

2. ILLUSTRATED TITLE PAGE, 

3. ARCHITECTURAL CONTRASTS, . 

4. BUSINESS CONTRASTS, 

5. STOCK EXCHANGE, BROAD STREET, 

6. BLACKWELL'S ISLAND, 

7. STREET VENDERS, . 

8. ''UMBRELLAS," . 

9. CHINESE CANDY DEALERS, 

10. FORT LAFAYETTE, 

11. THE MALL. CENTRAL PARK 

12. imiON SQUARE, 

13. PILOT BOAT. 

14. BARNUIM'S MUSEUM, 1860, . 
• 15. THE BATTERY, 

16. PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE, 

17. PARK BANK, BROADWAY, 

18. WASHINGTON MARKET, 

19. STREET ARABS, 

20. STREET BEGGARS, 

21. MACKERELVILLE TLTIN-OUT, 

22. HOWARD MISSION, 

23. ROOM IN HOWARD MISSION, 
m. CITY MISSIONARY, 
25. LOW GROGGERY, 
86. THE FIRST SNOW. 



Frontispiece. 



23 
48 
77 
90 
92 
98 
109 
121 
128 
176 
176 
243 
310 
344 
408 
427 
457 
465 
526 
526 
547 
659 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE RICH AND POOR. 



Fashion and Famine. — Charms and Counter-Charms of the Metropolis. — 
Lights and Shadows Everywhere. — Life at its Best and Worst. — Marble 
Palaces and Squalid Tenement Houses. — What They Contain. 23 

CHAPTER n. 

NEW YORK SOCIETY. 

Its Divisions and Characteristics. — The Old Knickerbocker Families. — 
The Cultivatedly Comfortable.— The New Rich.— The Mere Adven- 
turers. — Social Shams and Snobs. — The American Gentleman and 
Lady. ....... 31 

CHAPTER ni. 

W.\LL STREET. 

The Banking-House of the Continent. — Money-Getting and Mammon-Wor- 
ship. — The Mania for Stock and Gold Operations. — The Exchange and 
Gold Room. — Great Wealth of the Quarter. — Its Redeeming Virtues. 40 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE POLICE. 

The Force in the City. — Its Strength and Effectiveness. — The Best and 
Worst Class. — Their Habits and Operations. — The Station House and 
Prisoners. — Scenes and Characters. — Detectives and their Varieties. 50 

CHAPTER V. 

THE SHIPPING. 

Sea-Ports and Sea-Thoughts. — Commerce of the Great City. — Its Trade 
all over the Globe. — Vessels and Sailors. — Scenes at the Dock and on 
Shipboard. — The People who Arrive and Depart. . . 59 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE ROUGHS. 

Their Physiology and Psychology. — Haunts and Habits of the Class. — 
Their Education and Associations. — Defeated Justice and Dangerous 
Elements. — The Wild Beasts in an Unseen Lair. . . 67 



8 Contents. ^, 

CHAPTER VII. 

BLACKWELL'S ISLAND. 

The Abode of Paupers and Criminals.— The Different Buildings and their 
Inmates. — Mj'sterious Babies and Notorious Thieves. — Curious Luna- 
tics and Peculiar Characters. — A Fancied Napoleon Bonaparte. — An 
Imaginary Prophet. ...... 76 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FIRST OF MAY. 

Moving in Manhattan. — Oi'igin of the Custom. — House-Hunting and 
House Hunters. — Among the Rich and Poor. — May-Scenes and Ex- 
periences. — Change and Chaos from the Battery to the Park. 86 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE STREET-VENDERS. 

The Bohemians of Trade and Bedouins of Traffic— News and Flower 
Dealers. — Dog-Fanciers and Toy-Peddlers. — Ketail Shams and Small 
Swindles. — Bowery Breakfasts and Park-Row Dinners.— Old Clothes 
Hawkers and Chinese Candy-Scller.s. ... 92 

CHAPTER X. 

THE FERRIES. 

Their Number, Location and Business. — Different Classes of Passengers. 
— Occupation and Toil, Hope and Success on the Waters. — The Refluent 
Wave of Humanity. — The Ail-Night Boats. — .Journalists and Printers 
on their Way Home. . . . . . 100 

CHAPTER XI. 

GREENWOOD. 

Picturesqueness of the Cemetery. — Its Extent and Range of View. — 
Activity of Funerals. — Sentiment and Pathos. — Burial of a Prosperous 
Merchant. — The Tearless Widow. — The Last of the True Wife and 
Mother. — The Poor Outcast at the Tomb. — Epitaphs and their HoUow- 
ness. — A Romantic Maiden who Would Not Die. . . 110 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE PARKS. 

Decay and Abandonment of the Old Plazas. — The Central Park, its 
People and Prospects. — The Resort of the Wealthy and Indigent. — 
The Two Carriages and their Occupants. — A Pair of Nobodies. — Glit- 
tering Discontent. . . . . . . 121 



Contents. 9 

CHAPTER XIII. 

y THE BOWERY. 

The Quarter and its Habitues. — Tricks and Tradesmen There. — The 
Bowery Merchant's Manner of Dealing with Customers. — A Sailor 
and Land-Shark. — After Night-fall. — The Bowery Boy Extinct. 129 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE FORTUNE-TELLERS. 

The Mystic Tribe and its Patrons. — Dowdy Priestesses and Common- 
place Oracles. — Scenes of Sorcery. — Interior of a Temple of Fate. — 
Revelations about Wives. — A Tawdry Witch of Mysterious Pretension. 
— Superstitions of Business Men. — The Calling not Profitable. 138 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE BOHEMIANS. 

Popular Idea of the Class. — The True and False Guild. — What They are and 
Believe. — The Original Tribe in New York. — Sketches of the Promi- 
nent Members. — Disreputable Specimens. — The Earnest Disciples. 150 

CHAPETR XVI. 

THE LAGER BEER GARDENS. 

Their Numbers and Variety. — Peculiarities of the Manhattan Beverage.-^ 
German Characteristics and Customs. — Teutonic Simplicity and 
Enjoyment. — The Atlantic Garden. — Music, Tobacco, Talk and Tip- 
pling. ....... 159 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE CHURCHES. 

Their Number and Wealth — Their Liberality and Beauty. — Religion as a 
Form — A Fashionable Temple. — Repulsion of Humble Strangers. — 
An Elegant Congregation. — Characters. — Pulpit Oratory. — Genuine 
Christianity. . • . . .167 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE THEATERS. 

Dramatic Assumptions of the Metropolis. — Character of its Audiences. — 
Dramatic Temples. — Their Different Patrons. — Wallack's, Niblo's 
Garden, the Olympic, Pike's Opera House, the Academy of Music, the 
New York, the Theatre Francais, the Broadway, Wood's, Booth's and 
the Bowery. . . . . . . 175 



10 Contents. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE DEAD BEATS. 

The Higher and Lower Sort. — Requirements and Peculiarities of the 
Calling. — ^\''ariety and Contrast of the Life. — Photograph of the 
Creature. — Sketch of his Career. — Reclaiming a Prodigal. — ^Freedom 
from Debt the Sole Independence. . . . . 186 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE ADVENTURESSES. 

Man's Vanity and Woman's Cunning. — Origin of the Strange Women. — 
Their Ample Field in the City. — Their Mental and Moral Code. — 
Operations at the Hotels. — War Widows. — Examples of Interesting 
Poverty. — Advertising Tricks. — ^Emigrants. — The Traveling Sister- 
hood. — A Remnant of th.e Woman Left. . . . 19$ 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE BOARDING HOUSES. 

The Fashionable Establishments and their Noticeable Features. — Mrs. 
Dobbs and her Patrons. — The Landlady from Life. — ^Weal and Woe of 
her Happy Family. — Comfortless Comfort of a Home. — The Salesman, 
Law Student and Reporter. — Dreary Dinners. — Evening Entertain- 
ments. ....... 205 

CHAPTER XXII. 

HORACE GREELEY. 

Prevalent Ideas of Him.— His Early Years.— Establishment of the Tri- 
bune. — His Indefatigable Industry and Great Popularity.— His Fancy 
Farm at Chappaqua— His Family and Charities— His Eccentricities. 
— The Verdict of his Countrymen. . . . 214 

CHAPTER XXm. 

THE FIFTH AVENUE. 

Architecture of Be Street.— Its Exclusivcncss and Wealth.— Inner Life and 
Outward Show.— Pretension and Refinement.— Oppressive Monotony. 
—Gorgeous Interiors.— The Queen of the Drawing Room.— The Devotee 
of Fashion.— Blazing Hearths and Ashen Hearts.— Fate of the Un- 
recognized. — Untold Histories. . • • 219 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

HENRY J. RAYMOND. 

The Beginning of his Career.— Entry into Journalism and Politics. — The 
Times Office.— The Elbows-of-the Mincio Article.— Personal Appear- 
ance and Private Affixirs. — Temperamental Peculiarity. . 230 



Contents. - 11 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE BATTERY. 

What it was and is. — Its Historic Associations. — Its Lingering Attractions. 
— The Emigrant Depot at Castle Garden. — Idiosyncrasies of Foreigners. 
— How They are Fleeced. — Germans, Scotch, Irish, French and 
Italians. ....... 236 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE GAMBLING HOUSES. 

Twenty-Five Hundred in the City. — The Fashionable Faro Banks. — 
Description of their Habitues. — Vulgar Haunts and Common Black- 
legs. — Princely Proprietors and Plebeian Plunderers. — Phenomena 
of Faro, — Varieties of Gaming. .... 243 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

School Days and Theological Training. — Eccentricities of Character. — His 
Power and Influence in his Pulpit. — Journalistic, Political and Literarj 
Career. — "Norwood" and the Forthcoming "Life of Jesus." — Popu- 
larity as a Lecturer. — His Domestic Affairs. . . 252 

CHAPTER XXVm. 

THE RESTAURANTS. 

Up-Town and Down-Town. — Eating-Houses. — Their Great Variety. — Over 
Five Thousand in Town. — The Guerilla System of Dining. — People You 
Have Met. — Lunching Makes Strange Companions. — Late Suppers. — 
Elegant Dissipation. ..... 260 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

MANTON MARBLE. 

The "Man of the World." — His Early Love of Journalism. — His Experi- 
ence in Boston. — The Great Democratic Organ. — Its Antecedents and 
Progress. — Shrewd Management of the Editor-in-Chief. — The Man- 
hattan Club. ...... 267 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE FIVE POINTS. 

The Notorious Locality. — Poverty, Misery and Vice. — Baxter Street Life 
and Morals. — The Swarm of Children. — Etchings from Nature. — Rep- 
resentative Races. — The Callings of the Place. — The Dance-Houses. — 
What One Sees There. ..... 271 



12 Contents.' i 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE MORGUE. 

Its Growing Need in Gotham. — Its Appearance and Regulations. — Fascina- 
tion of the Horrible. — Scenes Within and Without. — Apoplexy, Murder, 
Homicide and Suicide. — The Humorous Side of Ghastllness. 280 

CHAPTER XXXII 

ALEXANDER T. STEWART. 

The Man of Money and Embodiment of Business. — His Past History. — A 
Merchant by Accident. — His Erection of the First Marble Building 
in Broadway. — His Up-Town Store. — His Fifth-Avenue Palace. — His 
Reputation for Generosity. — His Immense Wealth. — His Private 
Life. 289 

CHAPTER XXXni. 

THE DAILY PRESS. 

The Herald, Tribune, Times, World, Journal of Commerce and Sun. — 
Defects of the Metropolitan Newspapers. — Their Circulation and 
Characteristics. — Their Antecedents and Profits. — The Evening Journ- 
als.— What They Are and Do. . . . . 295 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE WEEKLY PRESS. 

Their Great Number. — The Illustrated Papers. — Remarkable Success of 
the Ledger. — The Sunday Journals and their Character. — Journalism 
as a Profecsion in New York. — Slenderness of the Compensation. — 
Needs of the Calling. — Its Overcrowding. . . . 311 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

WILLIAM B. ASTOR. 

An Exception to Most Rich Men's Sons. — His Great Care of his Father's 
Estate. — His Industry, Energy and Sagacity. — His Freedom from 
Pretension or Extravagance. — His Daily Duties and Domestic Life. — 
The Wealthiest Man in America. .... 319 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE CONCERT SALOONS. 

Their Rise and Sudden Popularity. — Various Grades of Music-Hails. — 
Danger of Frequenting Them. — The "Pretty Waiter Girls." — The 
Night Haunts. — The Vision of Dissipation. — Demoralizing Influence of 
Such Places. ...... 326 



Contents. 13 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 

The Beginning of his Fortunes. — The Staten Island Perriauger. — A Purely 
Self-Made Man. — His Control of Steam Lines. — The Great Railway 
King. — Passion for Whist and Horses — His Extraordinary Wall Street 
Operations. — His Vast Income. — His Remarkable Vigor in Old Age. 333 

CHAPTER XXXVin. 

BROADWAY. 

The Street Cosmopolitan and Cosmoramic. — Its Architecture and Constant 
Throng. — Poetry and Philosophy of the Thoroughfare. — Its Resources 
and Suggestiveness. — Romance and Reality. — ^Love and Friendship. — 
Changes of Fortune. — All the World Flowing through that Channel. 839 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE THIEVES. 

Crime and Criminals. — Scoundrels Actual and Ideal. — Burglars, Hotel- 
Robbers, Shop-Lifters, Pickpockets and Sneaks. — Their Number and 
Mode of Operating. — The Art of Stealing and Science of Being 
Undiscovered. . . . . . . 346 

CHAPTER XL. 

SUNDAY IN NEW YORK. 

The Change of the Week. — Silence of the Sabbath. — The Sacredness of 
Rest. — Different Modes of Enjoying the Day. — Excursions out of 
Town. — God in the Town and Country. . . . 355 

CHAPTER XLI. 

THURLOW WEED. 

The Cabin Boy Becomes a Political Warwick — His Extraordinary Tact 
and Insight. — His Long Control of New York Politics. — The Whig 
Triumviate. — The Commercial Advertiser. — His Adroit Management 
of an Obstinate Assemblyman. — His Income and Good-Heartedness. 365 

CHAPTER XLII. 

BLEECKER STREET. 

Its Past and Present. — ^Tts Variety and Oddity. — Its Strange Occupants. 
— Deception and Intrigue. — Dissipation and Death. — The Quarter of 
Artists and Bohemians. — Disturbance of Lodgers. — Great Freedom of 
the Neighborhood. . . . 372 



14 Contents. 



CHAPTER XLIIL 

NASSAU STREET. 

Its Uniqueness and Symbolism. — Curious People and Phenomena. — Love 
and Loans. — Lager and Literature. — Confusion of Humanity. — The 
Old Book Stores. — Rambles Up and Down Dusty Stairways. — Back- 
Office Secrets. — Prolific Material for Novels. . . 381 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE HOTELS. 

Americans not Domestic. — The Astor, St. Nicholas, Metropolitan, Fifth 
Avenue, New York, Brevoort and Barcelona. — Second Class Houses. — 
Gossip, Flirtation and Intrigue. — Hotel Life in Various Phases. 390 

CHAPTER XLV. 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Fame in the Metropolis. — His Poetry and Travels. — The Evening Post. — 
His Labors and Influence as a Journalist. — His Domestic Tastes. — A 
Hale and Hearty Patriarch. — A Congenial Companion and Clever 
Talker. ....... 399 

CHAPTER XLVL 

THE MARKETS. 

American Extravagance in Living — Disagreeableness of Market Going. — 
Liberal Supplies of Everything. — The Diflferent Customers. — The 
Penurious-Wealthy. — Blushing Brides and Cheap Boarding House 
Keepers. — The Scale of Prices. — The Evening Market. . 405 

CHAPTER XLVII. 

THE POST OFFICE. 

The Old Dutch Church the Most Popular in Town. — Immense Business of 
the Metropolitan Office. — Anxious Inquirers and Insolent Clerks. — 
Letter- Writers and Letter-Getters. — The General Delivery. — The Dif- 
ferent Stations. — Their Illegitimate Use. . . . 415 

CHAPTER XLVni. 

THE GAMINS. 

Their Antecedents and Training. — Their Favorite Callings and Pleasures. 
— Persevering Boot-Blacks and Energetic Newsboys. — The Bowery 
Theatre Resort. — Decline and Development of the Urchins. — Natural 
Results of Bad Education. ..... 424 



Contents. 15 

CHAPTER XLIX. 

THE DEMI-MONDE. 

The Relation of the Sexes. — Man's Injustice and Woman's Wrongs. — 
Courtesans in the Metropolis. — Their Character and Calling. — Their 
Life, Love and Redeeming Traits. — Sad Pictures of Fallen Women. 434 

CHAPTER L. 

THE CLUBS. 

Their Number in Manhattan. — The Most Famous Club-Houses. — Their 
Management and Membership. — How Women Regard Them. — The 
Century, Manhattan, Union-League, Travelers', City, New York, and 
Eclectic. — The Deceased Athenasum. — Journalistic Clubs. — Club Life 
in the Great City. ..... 442 

CHAPTER LI. 

THE BEGGARS. 

Their Nationality. — The Throng Increasing. — The Four Great Classes. — 
The Notorious Mendicants. — A New Order. — The Broadway Blindman. 
— The Old Hag near Fulton Ferry. — The Armless Frenchman. — The 
Canal Street Humpback. — The Noseless Pole. — The Mackerelville 
Dwarf — Fortunes of the Vagabond Tribe. . . . 456 

CHAPTER LH. 

STREET RAILWAYS. 

Their Supposed Origin. — Their Supreme Independence. — New York Made 
for them. — Magnanimity of the Managers. — The Charmed Life of 
Passengers. — Wonders of the Roads. — Haps and Mishaps of Travel. — 
The Hero of a Thousand Cars. — Every -Day Miracles- . 466 

CHAPTER LUL 

THE PAWNBROKERS. 

What They Represent and What They Are.— Under the Shadow of the 
Three Balls. — Messrs. Abrahams and Moses in their Glory. — The 
Watch, the Diamond Bracelets, the Keepsake. — Strange History of 
Pledges. ....... 473 

CHAPTER LIV. 

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY. 

The Boys and Girls' Lodging House. — How they are Managed and Sup- 
ported. — Receipts and Expenditures. — The Emigration and Restoring 
System. — Industrial Schools. Refuge for Homeless Children. — Ad- 
vatange of the Charity. • • . . 483 



16 Contents. 

CHAPTER LV. 

JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 

The Child, Boy and Man. — His Education for the Church. — Struggles in 
America. — Choice of Journalism for a Profession. — Frequent Failures. 
— Establishment of the Herald. — Its first Success. — Peculiarities of the 
Man. — His sole Ambition and its Realization. — His private Life. 491 

CHAPTER LVL 

THE CHINESE EMBASSY IN NEW TORK. 

What One of the Number Thinks of the Metropolis. — His Experiences of 
American Life. — Puppies for Supper. — Peculiar Rats. — The City- 
Directory as a Guide. — The Cause of Fires. — " Ghin Sling " in Various 
Trying Situations. . . . . . . 499 

CHAPTER LVIL 

JENKINSISM IN THE METROPOLIS. 

The Peculiar Tribe. — Elaborate Description of a Wedding by one of the 
Fraternity. — The Bride and Bridegroom. — The Invited Guests. — Who 
they were, and how they Appeared. — Extraordinary Scenes at the 
Altar. — New Sensations at the Reception. . . 509 

CHAPTER LVIIL 

FASHIONABLE WEDDINGS. 

What they Mean, and How they are Managed. — Ambitious Mammas and 
Submissive Daughters. — Mr. and Mrs. Fleetfast and their Connubial 
Career. — The Three Essentials. — Grace Church Brown. — Mockeries of 
Love. ....... 516 

CHAPTER LIX. 

THE CITY MISSIONS. 

The Five-Points Mission. — The Howard Mission. — The House of Industry. 
— Their Regulations and Advantages. — Attendance, Donations and 
Expenses. — Intemperance the Cause of the Evils. . . 523 

CHAPTER LX. 

THE TOMBS. 

Origin of the Name. — The Inner Quadrangle. — The Tiers of Gloomy 
Cells. — Character of the Prisoners. — A House of Detention. — The 
Three Departments. — The Police Court and Court of Sessions. — Sunday 
Morning's Tribunal. — Notorious Criminals who Have been There. — 
The Gallows and its Victims. — Religious Exercises. 528 



Contents. 17 

CHAPTER LXL 

THE MIDNIGHT MISSION. 

The First Movement for the Reclamation of Fallen Women. — The Desti- 
tution of the Charity in New York. — The Asylum in Amity St. — Plan 
of Procedure. — Success of the Enterprise. — The Receptions. — Touching 
Scenes. — Repentant and Reformed Courtesans. — What the Charity 
Teaches. ....... 535 

CHAPTER LXn. 

ASSOCIATIONS FOR THE POOR. 

Effectiveness of the Charity. — Its Origin and Progress. — How it is Con- 
ducted. — Visits to the Tenement-Houses. — What is Undertaken and 
Accomplished. — The Spirit of Humanity at Work. — Beautiful Ex- 
amples. ....... 542 

CHAPTER LXin. 

WORKING WOMEN'S HOME. 

An Excellent Organization. — Mode of its Management. — Weeping Eyes 
Dried, and Wounded Hearts Healed. — Direction of the Institution. — . 
Benefits Conferred upon the Poor. — Reaching the Source of Suf- 
fering. ....... 548 

CHAPTER LXIV. 

THE MILITARY. 

Fondness for Parade. — The National State Guard. — The First Division. — ■ 
The Armories. — The Crack Regiments. — The Seventh.— Its Departure 
for the War. — The Great Sensation in Broadway. — Holiday Sol- 
diers. ....... 554 

CHAPTER LXV. 

THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. 

The Old System and its Evils. — The Engine Houses in Times Past. — The 
Present Department. — The Steam Engines and Horses. — Their Advant- 
age and Efficacy. — The Dead Rabbit and Decent Fire-Boy. 561 

CHAPTER LXVI. 

RACING AND FAST HORSES. 

The Union, Long Island and Fashion Courses. — The Jerome Park — Fond- 
ness for Horse Flesh.— The Passion Growing.— Gentlemen's Stables. — 
Millionaires on the Road. — Vanderbill, Bonner, Jerome and Fellows. — 
Money Invested in Blooded Stock. — Pleasures of the Turf. 568 



18 Contents. 

CHAPTER LXVII. 

GIFT ENTERPRISES AND SWINDLES. 

The Many Swindles upon Countrymen. — Policy Shops. — Lottery OfiBces. 
— Infiimous Devices. — The Rural Regions Flooded with Circulars. — 
Inability of the Law to B,each the Rogues. — How Mr. Greenhorn ig 
Victimized. ....... 575 

CHAPTER LXVni. 

THE WICKEDEST WOMAN IN THE CITY. 

Madame Rcstell the Abortionist. — Her Long and Shuddering Career. — 
Her Notorious Trial and Acquittal. — Her Dreadful Secrets and Practices. 
— Her Palace in Fifth Avenue. — Her Antecedents and Appearance. 582 

CHAPTER LXIX. 

MATRIMONUL BROKERAGE. 

The Brokers in the City, and their Manner of Operating. — Strange 
Revelations of Human Weakness. — Foolish Women and Hoary Sim- 
pletons. — Snares Laid for Feminine Innocence. . . 588 

CHAPTER LXX. 

HERALDRY ON THE HUDSON. 

The Metropolitan Passion for Titles. — The Heraldry Office. — Manner of 
Conducting it. — Smithers in search of his Family. — Peculiar Mode of 
Making Genealogical Trees. — The Plebeian Magennises and the Nor- 
man Descent. Absurdity of Patrician Assumption. . 596 

CHAPTER LXXI. 

THE CHILD-ADOPTING SYSTEM. 

How it is Carried On. — The Women Professionally Engaged in It. — 
Singular Disclosures. — Infants of all Kinds Furnished, — The Baby 
Market and its Fluctuations. .... 603 

CHAPTER LXXn. 

BANKERS AND WALL-STREET OPERATORS." 

Daniel Drew, Brown Brothers, Leonard W. Jerome, James G. King's Sons, 
Jay Cooke, David Groesbeck, August Belmont, and Fisk & Hatch, 611 

CHAPTER LXXIII. 

CHARLES O'CONOR. 

His Early Poverty and Industry. — His Inclination to the Law. — His Em- 
inence at the Bar. — His Singular Political Opinions. — His Large In- 
come and Forensic Capacity. — His Present Status. . 618 



Contents. 19 

CHAPTER LXXIV. 

JAMES T. BRADY. 

His Legal Studies and Success. — His Enthusiasm for Ireland, and Popu- 
larity with the Irish. — His Deep Interest in his Clients. — His Perpetual 
Speech-Making. — His After-Dinner Ardor. . . 622 

CHAPTER LXXV. 

FERNANDO WOOD. 

His Past Life. — His First Election to the Mayoralty. — Double Disappoint- 
ment of the Committee. — His Conduct and Character. — Personal Ap- 
pearance and Influence. ..... 625 

CHAPTER LXXVI. 

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN. 

An Exaggerated American. — His Excentricities at Home and Abroad. — 
Book-making, Speech-making, and Money-making. — His Declaration 
that he is in no Danger. — Called a Fool. — His Supreme Egotism and 

I Loquacity. — His Real Character. .... 629 

CHAPTER LXXVIL 

FANNY FERN. 

Parentage.-Girlhood. -Marriage. -Husband's Death.-Struggle with Pover- 
ty. — First Literary Earnings. — Connection with the Ledger. — "Fern 
Leaves" and "Ruth Hall." — Second Marriage. — Present Position. 633 

CHAPTER LXXVni. 

TWO STRONG-MINDED WOMEN. 

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. — The Revolution. — What 
the Woman's Rights Women Are and Demand. — Their Pen-Photo- 
graphs. ....... 636 

CHAPTER LXXIX. 

PETER COOPER. 

History of a Self-Made Man. — His various Pursuits. — His Benevolence and 
Sympathy with the People.— The Cooper Institute.— His Honesty and 
Sterling Worth. ...... 640 

CHAPTER LXXX 

GEORGE LAW. 

His Early Struggles. — Contracts the Beginning of his Fortune. — The 
George Law Markets. — His Personal Unpopularity and Common-Place 
Appearance. — His Day Gone By. . . , 642 



20 Contents. 

CHAPTER LXXXL 

PETER B. SWEENEY. 

His Political Power and Excessive Tact. — The Championship of the Ring. 
— His Large Wealth and Devotion to the Democracy. — The Manner of 
Man he is. . . . . . . . 645 

CHAPTER LXXXn. 

DISTINGUISED CLERGYMEN. 

Revs. Edwin H. Chapin, Henry C. Potter, Wm. Adam.s, Henry W. 
Bellows, Stephen H. Tyng, junior, Morgan Dix, F. C. Ewer, C. W. 
Morrill, Thomas Armitage, 0. B. Frothingham, Archbishop McCloskey. 
— Samuel Osgood. — H. B. Ridgaway. — Rabbi Adler. . 647 

CHAPTER LXXXni. 

JOHN ALLEN, " THE WICKEDEST MAN.-' 

The Religious Excitement. — John Allen's Dance-House. — The Prayer 
Meetings in Water-Street. — Their Good Effect. — The Insincerity of 
Ruffians no Reason for Censure. .... 659 

CHAPTER LXXXIV. 

MARK M. POMEROY. 

His Nativity and Wanderings. — His Career in the West. — La Cross Demo- 
cr.at. — His Establishment of a Daily in New York. — His Violent Politi- 
cal Course. — What he is and How he Looks. . . 663 

CHAPTER LXXXV. 

EMINENT BUSINESS MEN. 

Grinnell, Minturn & Co., Horace B. Claflin, Howland, Aspinwall & Co., A. 
A. Law & Bros., E. S. JaflFray & Co., Harper & Bros., D. Appleton & 
Co., Jackson S. Schultz, Charles A. Stetson, the Lelands, R. L. & A. 
Stuart. ....... 666 

CHAPTER LXXXVI. 

YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 

Its Origin and Conductors. — Excellence and Influence of the Society. — 
What its Members have Accomplished. — Their Work During the War. 
— Their Hospitality to Strangers. — Result of their Labors. 677 

CHAPTER LXXXVII. 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

The Day and Evening Schools. — Girls' Normal Schools. — Evening High 
School. — Free Academy — Attendance and Aptitude of Pupils. — The 
System of Instruction and its Success. — Women Superseding Men as 
Teachers. ....... 680 



Contents. 21 

CHAPTER LXJLXVIIL 

DISTINGUISHED WOMEN. 

Alice and Phoebe Gary. — Mary Clemmer Ames. — Kate Field. — Lucia Gil- 
bert Calhoun. — Octavia Walton Levert. — Jennie June. — Mary E, 
Dodge. — Sarah F. Ames. ... . . . 684 

CHAPTER LXXXIX. 

CITY CHARITIES. 

Divers Institutions. — Ward's Island. — Hospitals. — Orphan, Deaf and 
Dumb and Insane Asylums. — The Buildings and Inmates. — Mode of 
Treating Patients. — Liberality and Benevolence of New Yorkers. 690 

CHAPTER XC. 

THE GREAT METROPOLIS. 

Its Advantages and Disadvantages. — Improvements Everywhere. — Up- 
Town Splendors. — The Future of Manhattan. — The City Destined to 
be the Largest in the World. .... 697 



■A'^^^ 




ARCIIITECTUnAL CONTRAST. 




liUSlXK.sS CONTRAST. 



CHAPTER I . 
RICH AND POOR. 

In the M-^tropolis, more than in any other American 
city, there are two great and distinct classes of people — 
those who pass their days in trying to make money 
enough to live; and those who, having more than 
enough, are troubled about the manner of spending 
it. The former suffer from actual ills ; the latter from 
imaginary ones. Those lead a hard life ; these an 
empty one. Those suffer from penury ; these from 
ennui. Each envies the other; and both find exist- 
ence wearisome, and difficult to endure. But the poor 
have the advantage in necessary honesty and earnest- 
ness; while the prosperous dwell in an atmosphere of 
insincerity and sham. 

It is the custom to prate of the discontents of the 
rich. Yet we are all ambitious to share them, and to 
learn by experience the weight of purple robes and 
the sharpness of gilded thorns. 

Our citizens who figure in the income list have no 
season of repose. When not engrossed in their busi- 
ness pursuits, (it is the misfortune of this Republic that 
few of its inhabitants ever learn to enjoy their wealth 
calmly until it is too late,) they are either planning 
campaigns at the watering-places and tours in Europe, 
or perplexing themselves with the most approved and 



24 Rich and Poor. 

distinguished manner of entertaining their fashionable 
friends in town. 

They endeavor to leave such complicated affairs 
to women. But the women seek counsel of, and 
ever lean on, their masculine companions, and compel 
them, whether they will or not, to bear the burthen of 
leading a glittering, though hollow life, which rarely 
palls upon the feminine mind, occupied with externals, 
and reveling in appearances. So the Adams, even to 
the present day, pay the penalty of the temptation of 
Eve, and eat more sour apples than they do sweet ones, 
in the society of their irresistible charmers. 

New-York is unquestionably the paradise of women. 
It is to the United- States what Paris is to Europe ; 
and the fairer portion of creation, who dwell out of 
this vast and crowded City, remember their promenade 
in Broadway, their suppers at Delmonico's, their eve- 
nings at the Academy, and their drives in the Park, 
with a longing for their repetition that is almost akin 
to pain. 

No where else, they fondly imagine, are such dresses, 
and bonnets, and shawls, and jewelry to be purchased; 
no where else can they be so generally admired; 
no where else can pleasure be found in such varied 
form. 

Even Greenwood has its mortuary fascinations. The 
monuments look whiter there, the grass greener, the 
graves more genteel, the trees more droopingly sym- 
pathetic than in other cemeteries. And then the sub- 
terranean sleepers must have pleasant dreams of the 
excitements and sensations they enjoyed in the flesh 
on the island of Manhattan. When they die, they 
hope, in a sentimentally pious way, to take their last 



Rich and Poor. 25 

rest in such goodly company, and have winter roses 
strewn above them, that grew in hot-houses, and were 
cHpped with silver shears. 

Fifth, Madison and Lexington avenues, Fourteenth, 
Twenty-third and Thirty- fourth streets, Madison, Stuy- 
vesant and Grammercy squares are among the chosen 
abodes of the fashionable and wealthy, who ever tend 
up town, and will soon make the Central Park the nu- 
cleus of their exclusive homes. 

During the season, Saratoga, Newport, Paris and 
Florence are, for the time, dismissed, and home pleas- 
ures are alone considered. 

Receptions, sociables and "Germans" are the social 
events of those modish quarters; and milliners, man- 
tua-makers, hair-dressers, flower-venders, confectioners, 
and musicians, are busy from morning to night in lend- 
ing their expensive assistance to the devotees of fash- 
ion in the arduous art of killing time elegantly. 

Weddings, and their subsequent assemblies are at 
their height then. Hymen consorts with Cytherea, 
Juno and Bacchus, and supplies his torch with love- 
letters of the past, and capers nimbly upon hearts 
whence Mammon has expelled romance and the ideals 
of other days. 

All New- York is in the midst of gayety and dissipa- 
tion, and judging by surfaces, Eden is not far from the 
banks of the Hudson. Brilliant carriages, with liveried 
coachmen and footmen and sleek horses, dash up and 
down the avenues, depositing their perfumed inmates 
before brilliantly-lighted, high-stooped, brown-stone 
fronts, whence the sound of merry voices and voluptu- 
ous music comes wooingly out, through frequently- 
opened doors, into the chilly night. 



26 The Great Metropolis. 

One catches a glimpse of fair faces, and the odor of 
elaborate toilettes as pretty women hurry up the broad 
steps with kindling eyes and rosy lips, and disappear 
like beautiful visions amid the bewildering delights 
that are more seductive to, because they can only be 
conjectured by, the less fortunate wayfarers who are 
trudging to their humble homes, anxious and fatigued, 
and uncertain of the morrow. 

Oh, the inequality of Fortune ! It must be hard for 
the poor and distressed to believe that God is good, 
and Life a blessing, when they see every hour that 
thousands, in no way worthier, lie softly and fare 
daintily, while they go hungry and cold, and have no 
expectations of the better times that are always coming 
and never come. 

Life at its best is seen in this splendid mansion, 
where all is warmth, and color, and richness, and per- 
fume. The gilded drawing-rooms are crowded with a 
confusion of silks, and velvets, and laces, and broad- 
cloth, and flowers, and jewels; and from the seeming- 
happy crowd arises a pleasant hum of low-toned voices, 
as if passion would never lift them, or pain make them 
discordant, from the cradle to the grave. 

One meets there no shadows, no frowns, no haunt- 
ing cares. All individuality is lost. Everything is 
toned down to a level of conventional similarity. All 
are maskers; and the maskers deceive themselves, as 
well as others, respecting their true character, and go 
through life, as through the revel, dully and dream- 
ily, — believing they are happy because they are not 
sad, and that they are useful members of society be- 
cause they attend church, and envy their neighbors, 
and pay their taxes punctually. 



Rich and Poor. 27 

Probably there are hearts in the crowd distrustful 
if that be joy; but the wine is oiFered, and the music 
swells, and beauty beckons, and they float down the 
stream of pleasure, careless where it glides, and of the 
dark and fatal eddies that whirl below. The influ- 
ence of the hour is to drown thought and stifle feeling ; 
and he who can accomplish that will not suffer. 

Dancing, and feasting, and flirting, and gossip bind 
the hours with fragrant chaplets, and the duties and 
purposes of life sink into a soft oblivion ; while that is 
remembered only which is pleasant to bear in mind; 
and yields fruitage for self-love. 

The night reels, like a drunken Bacchant, away; 
and the stars grow pale as the revelers depart with 
bounding blood and dazed senses to the embroidered 
chambers that hold sweet sleep in silken chains. 

Life at its worst is visible not a hundred rods away. 
Yet to enter that wretched tenement-house, where the 
air is close and impure, who would suppose he was in 
the same city in which so much splendor and gayety 
are revealed? 

A family in every room 'here, and sickness, and de- 
bauch, and poverty, and pain on every floor. Groans, 
and curses, and riotous laughter, and reckless boister- 
ousness echo through those dingy halls, and steal up 
and down those greasy stairways, every desolate hour 
of the unwholesome day. Poison is in the atmosphere, 
and new-born babes breathe it before they suck their 
sickly mothers' sickly milk. Half a million of souls 
live in these pest-places. Vice, and crime, and death 
are their product, year after year ; and, amid constant 
vaporings about Reform, Christianity, Progress and 



28 The Great Metropolis. 

Enlightenment, tlie yield is steady and the dark har- 
vest growing. 

Have any of those bright eyes that swim in self- 
satisfaction at the brilliant receptions looked within 
these dreary walls? Do the kind hearts that must 
throb warmly and sympathetically beneath the flowing 
robe and embroidered vest, hold knowledge of these 
silent tragedies that the poor of this Great City are 
actors in? The prosperous are not unfeeling; but 
they do not know what incalculable good they might 
do if they would rightly set themselves to work to re- 
lieve the wretched of their race. They have their 
round of pleasures, and they are full. They little think 
what responsibilities their wealth has placed upon 
them ; what gods mere vulgar money might make 
them in potentiality of blessing. 

Clouds and sunshine, corpse lights and bridal lamps, 
joy-anthems and funeral-dirges, contrast and mingle 
in New- York ! Every ripple of light-hearted laughter 
is lost in its faintest echoes in a wail of distress. 
Every happy smile is reflected from a dark background 
of despair. 

The Metropolis is a symbol, an intensification of the 
country. Broadway represents the national life, — the 
energy, the anxiety, the bustle, and the life of the re- 
public at large. 

Take your stand there, and Maine, and Louisiana, 
the Caroliuas, and California, Boston, and Chicago, pass 
before you. 

So the Bowery, and Wall street, and Fifth avenue, 
with their different figures and types, — each manifest- 
ing many, and many one. Beggars and millionaires, 
fihoulder-hitters and thinkers, burglars and scholars, 



Rich and Poor. 29 

fine women and fortune-tellers, journalists and pawn- 
brokers, gamblers and mechanics, here, as everywhere 
else, crowd and jostle each other, and all hold and fill 
their places in some mysterious way. 

Out of the motley million, each, however blindly, 
tries to better his condition; seeks his happiness, as 
he conceives it; and arrives at ruin or prosperity, 
ignorance or culture, health or disease, long life or 
early V death. 

Sympathy is the weight that drags us down in our 
struggle with the devouring sea. Cast it off", and we 
swim freely. 

Selfishness is the friendly plank we grasp for safety. 
Holding it, we may reach the land, and then return 
with charity to help our shipwrecked fellows, and 
preserve them from the dangers from which we have 
escaped. 

Alas, that those who reach the shore so rarely ven- 
ture to sea again ! 

Tears and woe will come. Let us not go far to 
meet them. Take care of to-day, and the morrow will 
provide for itself 

Expect the best, and the worst will be less likely 
to happen. Believe yourself fortunate, and you have 
already robbed Fate of half its power to harm. What 
we mainly sufier from is the things that never occur ; 
for the shadows of anticipation are more formidable 
than the substance of the actual. 

The carriage is at the door, my friend. Shut up the 
shadow-book, and step into the light of the outer 
world. We will ride along rapidly while we can, and 
walk when we cannot ride ; for we will go into the 



30 The Great Metropolis. 

under-ground haunts, as well as the upper abodes of 
amusement and pleasure. 

Through and into New York we will look with calm, 
yea, philosophic — eye ; see its open and hidden mys- 
teries at every angle ; observe the places we enter, 
and analyze the people we encounter. 

Regard all men and women as brothers and sisters, 
never to be hated, but only to be pitied in that they 
are less fortunate than we. Become great and uni- 
versal democrats; and think nothing mean that is hu- 
man; nothing wholly ill; no sin so enormous that 
S3niipathy may not reach and charity cover it truly 
and tenderly. 

Leave Neraea to admire her beautiful eyes in the 
mirror ; for it will be more flattering to her than her 
fondest lover. If she weep, she will soon dry her 
eyes ; for tears she is aware dim their lustre. She is 
fair, and shapely, and elegant; but is no better in 
spirit and at heart, than the rude and homely Janette, 
who was born out of parallel with Nature. Janette 
went astray, since the path that lay before her was 
hard and crooked, as are so many ways of this World 
that we knownot whether to love or hate it, but which, 
after all, is the best we have seen. 



CHAPTER n. 
SOCIETY IN THE METROPOLIS. 

New- York is quite as much the fashionable, as it is 
the commercial metropolis ; for here are the age, the 
wealth, the caste-feeling and the social lines of demark- 
ation that so largely aid in forming and sustaining 
what is known as Society. In the United States gene- 
rally the duties we owe to society sit rather loosely 
upon "free-born Americans." But in New York they 
are such obligations as we feel called upon conscien- 
tiously to discharge, and do discharge upon pain of 
modish ostracism. 

Fashion upon Manhattan Island will admit of no 
compromise with Reason, and refuses to listen to the 
voice of Common-Sense. She demands her fullest 
rights, and her devotees yield them with a zeal that 
savors of social superstition. 

Fully half a million of our population are absorbed 
in a perpetual struggle to avoid physical suffering ; 
while a hundred thousand, probably pass their lives 
either in being, or trying to be fashionable. That 
hundred thousand are very gay, and seem positively 
happy. Yet their woes and throes are innumerable ; 
and their struggles with conventionality and gentility, 
though less severe, are as numerous as those of the 
half million with penury and want. 



32 The Great Metropolis. 

What our best society is will never be determined 
to the satisfaction of more than one of the cliques, or 
coteries, or sets that assume to represent it. Each and 
all of them claim they are itjj;ar excellence', and each 
and all go on in their own specific way, saturated with 
the conviction that they are the conservers and pre- 
servers of the finenesses, and courtesies, and elegan- 
cies of the fashionable elect. 

No society in the world has more divisions and sub- 
divisions than ours — more ramifications and inter-rami- 
fications, — more circles within circles — more segments 
and parts of segments. They begin in assumption 
and end in absurdity. They are as fanciful as mathe- 
matical lines ; and yet so strong that they can hardly 
be broken, and can rarely be crossed. 

The grand divisions may be stated, though the sub- 
divisions may not ; for they depend on religious creeds, 
on community of avocation, on contiguity of resi- 
dence, and a hundred nameless things. The grand 
divisions, like all that appertains to society, are purely 
conventional, wholly without foundation in reason or 
propriety. They depend upon what is called family, 
— on profession, wealth and culture, — the last con- 
sidered least, because it alone is of importance, and 
deserving of distinction. Family, inasmuch as few 
persons in this country know who were their great 
grandfathers, puts forth the strongest claim and makes 
the loftiest pretension. 

The old Knickerbockers, as they style themselves, 
insist upon it that they should have the first place in 
society ; and, as most of them inherited real estate 
from their ancestors, that they were too conservative 
to sell, and too parsimonious to mortgage, they can 



Society in the Metropolis. 33 

support their pretensions by assured incomes and 
large bank accounts, without which gentility is an 
empty word, and fashion a mockery and a torment. 

All the Vans and those bearing names suggestive of 
Holland, vow they are of the Knickerbocker stock, 
albeit it is said, some who were Smiths and Joneses 
two or three generations ago have since become Van 
Smythes and Van Johannes. 

Be this as it may, the actual or would be Knicker- 
bockers, are often the narrowest and dullest people on 
the Island, and have done much to induce the belief that 
stupidity and gentility are synonymous terms. They 
have fine houses generally, in town and country; have 
carriages and furniture with crests, though their fore- 
fathers sold rum near Hanover Square, or cast nets in 
East river ; live expensively and pompously ; display 
conspicuously in their private galleries their plebeian 
ancestors in patrician wigs and ruffles, that the thrifty 
old Dutchmen never dreamed of among their barrels 
of old Jamaica, or their spacious and awkward seines. 
They do all those showy things; yet are they 
degenerate sons of worthier sires, because they have 
one virtue less than they, — honesty, — and a defect, — 
pretension, — that puts the bar sinister upon all truly 
distinguished lineage. The Knickerbockers incline to 
entertainments and receptions where dreary platitudes 
pass for conversation, and well-intending men and 
women, whom nature would not bless with wit, fall 
asleep, and dream of a heaven in which they seem 
clever forevermore. 

The livers upon others' means form the second cla^s 
of our best society, without special regard to their 
genealogy. They sometimes boast that they do not 



34 The Great Metropolis. 

work themselves, and reveal their vulgarity by the 
vulgar boast ; but fancy that they have inherited gene 
tleness of blood with the fortunes that came unearned 
into their possession. 

Not a few of these have three or four generations of 
ease and luxury behind them ; and consequently the 
men and women are comely, and have good manners 
and correct instincts ; are quite agreeable as compan- 
ions, and capable of friendship. To this division of 
the community, art and literature are largely indebted 
for encouragement, and Broadway and Fifth-avenue 
to many of their attractions. 

These people patronize the opera, Wallack's, the 
classical concerts; furnish the most elegant equipages 
to the Park, and the most welcome guests to Saratoga, 
Newport and Long Branch. They wear genuine dia- 
monds, and laces and India shawls ; speak pure French 
and elegant English, — many of them at least ; and are, 
on the whole, very endurable when they are thrown 
into contact with persons who value them for what 
they are, and not for what they are worth. 

They are most injured by too much association with 
each other, and by lack of some earnest and noble 
purpose in a life they find it difficult to fill with aught 
beside frivolity. 

The cultivatedly comfortable, who are the third and 
best representatives of our society, give it its best and 
highest tone from the fact that they are independent, 
broad and sensible. Successful authors and artists 
belong to this class, and all the families who have 
ideas beyond money, and consider culture quite equal 
to five-twenties. They lend a helping hand to those 
who are struggling in the sphere of Art, whether the 



Society in the Metropolis. 35 

form be marble, colors, sounds, or words ; and believe 
that refinement and generosity are tlie best evidences 
of developed character. They give the most agree- 
able receptions in the city, — quiet gatherings of poets, 
authors, painters, sculptors, journalists, and actors occa- 
sionally, — without vulgar parade, or cumbersome form 
or wearisome routine. This class exercises a strong and 
marked influence, and is rapidly increasing ; for, though 
really democratic, it is aristocratic in the true sense. 

The new rich are at present stronger and more nu- 
merous than ever in New York. They profited by 
contracts and speculations during the War, and are 
now a power in the Metropolis, — a power that is satir- 
ized and ridiculed, but a power nevertheless. They 
are exceedingly prononce^ hizarre^ and generally man- 
age to render themselves very absurd ; but, inasmuch 
as they annoy and worry the Knickerbockers, who 
have less money and are more stupid than they, I pre- 
sume they have their place and achieve a purpose in 
the social life of Gotham. 

These are the people who flare and flash so at the 
places of amusements, on the public promenades and 
in the principal thoroughfares, and whom strangers 
regard as the exponents of our best society, when 
they really represent the worst. They outdress and 
outshine the old families, the cultivatedly comfortable, 
the inheritors of fortunes, and everybody else, in 
whatever money can purchase and bad taste can sug- 
gest. 

They have the most imposing edifices on the Avenue, 
the most striking liveries, the most expensive jewelry, 
the most gorgeous furniture, the worst manners, and 
the most barbarous English. They prejudice plain 



36 The Great Metropolis, 

persons against Trealth, inducing them to believe that 
its accamulation is associated with indelicacy, pretense 
and tawdriness, and that they who are materially 
prosperous are so at the price of much of their native 
judgment and original good sense. After two or three 
generations, even the new rich will become tolerable ; 
will learn to use their forks instead of their knives in 
transferring their food to their m-ouths; will fathom 
the subtle secret that impudence is not ease, and that 
assumption and good breeding are diametrically op- 
posed. 

The mere adventurers are an itinerant class of New- 
York society, which flashes and makes a noise for a 
few months, or years, possibly, and then goes out, and 
is heard no more. They are of the new rich sort in 
appearance and manners, but more reckless, more tin- 
seled and more vulgar, — because they are aware their 
day is brief, and the total eclipse of their glory nigh. 

In the Spring we see their mansions resplendent and 
their carriages glittering oppressively through the 
drives of the Park and along the Bloomingdale road. 
In the Autumn, the red flag is displayed from the sat- 
in-damasked windows, and placards, on which are in- 
scribed "Sheriff's sale," are posted on the handsome 
stables, where blooded horses stand ungroomed in 
rosewood stalls. 

The adventurers live upon the top of a bubble 
which they know will burst soon, but which they de- 
sign to enjoy while they can. They come here with 
some means or some credit, and go largely into an 
operation, — whether in advertising a patent medicine 
or "bearing" a leading stock, it matters little, — talk 
largely and coolly of their ability to lose hundreds of 



Society in the Metropolis. 37 

thousands without hurting them, but subsequently de- 
clare they have made as much ; and on this plane of 
assurance contract enormous debts, and drive foar-in- 
hand to the devil. 

How many of these failures do I remember ! How 
like a volcano they blazed, and at last hid their fires in 
smouldering ashes and unsightly cinders ! They had a 
good time no doubt, in their own estimation, and rel- 
ished the joke of cajoling the unfortunate tradesmen 
who played the sycophant for custom. They teach 
lessons, these adventurers, but give more expensive 
ones than they take, or are willing to pay for. 

The sham and snobbery of our society are in the 
main indisputable, and far beyond those of any city in 
the Union ; for there is a constant inroad upon the 
Metropolis of wealthy vulgarity and prosperous coarse- 
ness, from every part of the country, giving us more 
sinners against good breeding than Ve can conveni- 
ently bear, or should be charged with on our own ac- 
count. Indeed, we have too much of the native 
article to require importation, and could better afford 
to part with what grows spontaneously here for the 
disadvantage of other less pretentious, but more de- 
serving cities. 

New-York society furnishes such themes for the 
satirist as no other place can, since its assumption and 
hnllowness are greater, and its pretensions to superi- 
ority more insolent. 

Wealth is good; but refinement, and culture, and puri- 
ty, and nobleness are better. Everything not dishonest 
nor dishonorable merits a certain degree of respect and 
esteem, so long as it does not assume to be other than 
it is. But, when wealth claims to be virtue, or culture 



88 The Great Metropolis. 

lineage, or purity elegance, or impudence genius, they 
all become vulgarized. 

When will our American citizens cease to imitate 
Europe, — copying the vices of the titled, and omitting 
their virtues ? When will they learn that thorough 
good breeding, as well as entire honesty, consists in 
daring to seem what they are, and in valuing manhood 
and womanhood above their accidental surroundings? 
Remember, oh worshippers of Sham, that you never 
impose upon others as you do upon yourselves, and 
that simplicity and truth are the bravest quarterings 
on the shield of genuine nobility ! 

The American gentleman and lady, strictly such are 
not to be excelled by the titled of any land ; for they 
are the crownless kings and queens whose spiritual 
sceptres rule with a power of gentleness further and 
wider than the eye can see. 

Even in our most artificial circles, the best and loy- 
alest are to be found. Beneath the glitter of jewels 
and the costliest laces are bosoms full of sympathy and 
tenderness, and souls whose aspirations are after an 
ideal goodness. 

There are fastidious men and dainty women who 
are better and gentler for their carpets of velvet and 
couches of down ; who do good in unknown ways ; who 
stand by beds of suffering and at the hearth of pover- 
rty, and make them easier and lighter for their coming 
and their comfort. 

Fifth avenue and Grammercy Park are not so far 
from the Five Points and the Fourth ward as is gener- 
ally supposed. 

Out of carved doorways, and down stately staircases, 
go elaborately dressed messengers of charity, and silk- 



Society in the Metropolis. 39 

en purses are unloosed by jeweled fingers to bestow 
alms to the needy and succor to the distressed. 

Aye, even in the most heartless-seeming circles of 
Fashion there are saints in satin and angels in robes 
of the latest mode^ that hide noble qualities no less than 
beauty of form, and yet suppress those qualities not 
at all. 



CHAPTER III. 
WALL STREET. 

Wall Street is the banking-house of the continent. 

It is insignificant looking enough, with its crooked- 
ness and dinginess — its half-dozen blocks of grim, 
gloomy buildings. Yet its power is felt from Bangor 
to San Francisco, from Oregon to Florida ; even 
across the sea, and round the sphere. Like the Hin- 
doo deity, we see that it is homely, but we know that 
it is great. 

We cannot afford to despise Wall street, strong as 
our Avill may be ; for it holds the lever that moves the 
American world. We may despise its Mammon-wor- 
ship ; we may censure its corruption ; we may decry 
its morals. But, unless fortune has filled our purse 
with ducats — and often not then — we are unable to 
escape its influence, or exorcise its spell. It is a great, 
established, far-reaching fact ; and in its keeping are 
the curses and blessings that make up the weal and 
woe of life. 

Upon that financial quarter rest the pillars of the 
money market, that mysterious something which no 
one sees and every one feels — strong as Alcides, and 
yet sensitive as the Mimosa. 

All the cities, and towns, and villages of the country 
pay tribute to Wall street. All offer incense at its 



Wall Street. 41 

exacting shrine. All seek to propitiate it, that it may 
make a golden return. It is keen-eyed, broad-breasted, 
strong-armed, with a mighty brain and no heart — a 
Briareus without sympathy — a Samson without senti- 
ment. 

A stately church at one end, and a deep, broad 
stream at the other, are not without significance ; for 
Wall street prays and looks devout on Sunday, and 
every other day of the week yields to its secular na- 
ture as the river to the ocean-tides. 

All day and all night the stately spire of Trinity 
looks down upon the feverish, anxious street. All 
day and all night the East river floats softly to the 
sea. Humanity chafes, and frets, and suffers ; but 
the shadows come and go upon the lofty pile, and 
fall upon the deep-green waters, and leave them all 
unchanged. 

How many a worn and haggard face has looked up 
from the troubled thoroughfare for hope, yet found it 
not, in the direction of the heaven-pointing steeple, 
and thought of rest, but sought it not, in the bosom of 
the river ! 

Look at Wall street now, while the stars are shining 
down into its silence. You would not suppose it was 
turbulent and tremulous a few hours ago. It is still 
and placid as the battle-field after the battle. The 
strong houses are barred and bolted, and slumbering 
deeply for the struggle of the morrow. The great 
banks, whose names are known over all the land, and 
whose credit is firmer than their vaults, look like tombs 
at this hour. Their buried wealth no one guesses. It 
is supposed to be enormous ; and yet it may have been 
long exhausted. The banks may be merely bubbles ; 



42 The Great Metropolis. 

but tliey will float high and airily until panic pricks 
them, and they burst, spreading new panic in their 
breaking. 

Oh, the mystery and uncertainty of Credit ! Hard 
to create, the smallest circumstance destroys it. A mo- 
ment of distrust shatters the work of years. An un- 
founded rumor unsettles what half a century was need- 
ed to establish. Breathe against it, and what seemed 
a monument of marble melts like a snow-wreath before 
the southern wind. 

When the stars pale in the light of the morning, 
and the sun shimmers over the church and the river, 
Wall street still lies like a stolid sleeper — stirs not, nor 
appears to breathe. 

Trinity's solemn clock tells the hours slowly and 
measuredly, — tells them remorsely, think they who 
have engagements to meet, and, lacking collaterals, are 
driven to financial desperation. 

Nine strikes from the brown tower, and all along 
the streets the heavy doors open almost at once, and 
brawny porters look lazily out into the still, quiet 
quarter. 

The capitalists, and stock operators, and gold spec- 
ulators have not yet come down town. They are 
probably lounging over their luxurious breakfasts 
somewhere above Fourteenth street, though cashiers, 
and tellers, and book-keepers are at their desks, pre- 
pared for the business of the day. 

The steps on the narrow sidewalks begin to thicken. 
Carriages set down handsomely-dressed men, young 
and old, opposite the sign-crowded structures. 

The bulls and bears, fresh-looking and comely, with 
dainty -fitting gloves, artistic garments, and flowers in 



Wall Street. 43 

their button-holes, wheel into the street and hurriedly 
exchange greetings as they pass. The expression of 
their faces is changing. The regular fever of the time 
and place is rising. They are entering upon the finan- 
cial arena, prepared to give and take every advantage 
that the Board of Brokers allows. 

The tide of Wall street swells faster than the tide 
of the adjacent sea. The hum of voices grows into a 
war. Men hurry to and fro, and jostle, and drive, and 
rush in all directions, with eyes glittering and nerves 
a-strain, as if their soul were in pawn, and they had 
but forty seconds to redeem it. Doors slam and bang. 
Messengers, with piles of bank-notes and bags of coin, 
hasten up and down and across the thronged thorough- 
fares. 

Short, quick, fragmentary phrases slip sharply out 
of compressed lips. You hear "Erie, Central, Gold, 
Forty, Three-quarters, Sell, Buy, Take it. Thirty days. 
Less dividend. All right. Done"; and these cabalistic 
words make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars 
to those who utter them. 

Business is transacted largely and speedily, as 
though each day were the day before the final judg- 
ment and " margins" must be paid and " settlements" 
made before the next World opened a new stock ex- 
change for the bulls that were blessed, or expelled 
from the Board the bears that had failed of salvation. 

Every operator endeavors to outstrip his fellow. 
Device and deception, rumor and innuendo, ingenious 
invention and base fabrication, are resorted to. The 
greatest gambling in the Republic is going on, and the 
deepest dishonesty is concealed by the garb of com- 
mercial honor. No one asks nor expects favors. All 



44 The Great Metropolis. 

stratagems are deemed fair in Wall street. The only 
crime there is to be "short" or "crippled," "Here are 
my stakes," says Bull to Bear. "Shake the dice-box 
of your judgment, and throw for what you like. My 
luck against yours ; my power to misrepresent, and 
hide truth with cunning for the next thirty days." 

"Dare you agree to deliver Reading, ten or a hun- 
dred thousand, on the first, at a hundred and three ? " 
challenges Jerome, or Vanderbilt, or Drew. 

"Have you the nerve to hold Hudson River next 
week at a hundred and twenty-five ? Agree to deliver 
all you want." 

A nod, and a note as a memorandum, and the trade 
is made. 

The elegantly-dressed gamblers play largely, and 
hundreds of thousands are staked upon chances that 
shift like the wind. They live upon the excitement, 
as worn-out debauchees upon the stimulants that have 
grown necessary. Wall street is food and drink to 
them. They cannot spend their princely incomes; 
but neither can they perish of the ennui of honesty, 
of the inanity of repose. They can operate to what 
extent they choose. Wall street neither buys nor 
sells, as we should suppose. It merely pays "differ- 
ences" when the day for delivery arrives. Two, ten, 
twenty thousand dollars make good the "differences," 
and the shares or gold are left untouched. "Corners" 
are the ambition and the dread of all. Originally de- 
signed for the uninitiated, the shrewder are often 
manoeuvred into them ; and now and then the heav- 
iest operators are obliged to disgorge a million of 
their profits. 

A "corner" is thus managed. A heavy capitalist or 



i 



Wall Street. 45 

a number of capitalists conclude to operate for a rise 
in Erie or Pacific Mail. They go into the street, and 
wish to buy a large amount of the stock which may 
be then quoted, say at 85 cents on the dollar. They 
find persons who agree to deliver it in thirty days at 
86. Then the capitalists begin to purchase through 
brokers at the ruling price, and soon get all there is 
in the market, though so secretly that no one suspects 
they are the buyers. When the thirty days have ex- 
pired the stock they have jDurchased is to be delivered. 
The parties who have agreed to deliver it say they 
will pay the curent rate ; but the capitalists declare 
they must have the stock, and that they won't be satis- 
fied with anything else. Then the parties try to buy 
it, and the demand sends up the stock rapidly. They 
send brokers throughout the banking quarter, and the 
scarcity with the pressing demand causes the shares to 
advance 10 or 15, often 20 and 30 per cent, in a 
single day. When it is at such a figure as the capi- 
talists wish, they put their stock in the market, and sell 
it at the great advance from the old rate; thus 
realizing 15 to 20 per cent, on $5,000,000 or 
$6,000,000, perhaps $10,000,000, which will be be- 
tween $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 profit by a single 
transaction. 

The shrewdest of operators, like Daniel Drew and 
Leonard W. Jerome are reputed io have been made 
the victims of "corners," and to have lost fortunes in 
a day. But such as they are not often caught; the 
"corners" being formed for the less crafty and experi- 
enced. Often the capitalists consent to receive the 
difference between the price the stock was to be de- 
livered for and its advance, and then sell the stock at 



46 The Great Metropolis. 

the advance to persons who believe it will go still 
higher ; thus making an enormous double profit. 

Another favorite operation in Wall street is for the 
bears (the bears are those who want to pull down 
prices, and the bulls those who wish to push them up,) 
to withdraw a large amount of legal-tenders from cir- 
culation by borrowing money from the banks on cer- 
tain securities, either railway shares or government 
bonds. The legal-tenders are not wanted, of course, 
but the bears lock them up, and the money market 
growing tight, the banks call m their loans. Persons 
who have borrowed on the securities are obliged to 
sell them to pay what they have borrowed, and forcing 
the sale of the securities, causes them to decline. 
That is what the bears seek ; for they have agreed to 
deliver certain securities at a certain price and time. 
Say they have agreed to deliver New- York Central 
Tiailway at 105. The scarcity of money and the 
panic created thereby send Central down to 90. The 
bear who is to deliver $1,000,000 of the shares, thus 
makes $150,000 clear by his unscrupulous manage- 
ment. Every few weeks this locking up of bonds is 
resorted to by a few rich men who cause immense loss 
to others for the sake of increasing their own gains. 

Nothing could be more dishonest than this operation 
or getting up a "corner." It is as disreputable as 
picking a man's pocket ; yet Wall street not only al- 
lows, but admires and applauds it. 

People who buy stocks or gold in the banking 
c[uarter usually put up ^'margins," that is one-tenth of 
the amount of stock bought. If a man wishes to pur- 
chase $10,000 worth of Hudson River or Harlem Rail- 
way shares he leaves $1,000 with his broker, who holds 



■ Wall Street. 47 

the stock, and charges his customer 7 per cent, per an- 
num in ordinary times for the use of the money. If 
the shares fall 5 per cent, the broker notifies the 
buyer to make his margin good. If he don't do so, 
the broker sells the stock, takes out his interest and 
commissions, and returns the balance to the purchaser. 

If the shares go up the buyer makes $100 every 
time they advance 1 per cent. The reason so many 
men lose money is, that they put up all the money 
they have as margins ; and if the stock they purchase 
declines, though confident it will advance again, they 
have no more means, and their broker sells them out. 
Every day the margin men are obliged to let their 
stocks go when, if they could hold, on they would be 
certain to make something. But they are little fish, 
and in Wall street the big fish swallow the small ones 
all the year round. 

The Stock Exchange and Gold Room are the scenes 
of such tumult and confusion that only members can 
comprehend the mysterious transactions. Excited, 
anxious faces, nervous fingers writing hurriedly with 
pencils in little books, clamor of voices, lifting of 
hands, becks and nods, are all the spectator sees and 
hears. He cannot even learn the rate of shares or 
coin amid the flurry and the noise. It appears to him 
like the struggle of overgrown children for tempting 
fruit that one alone can have. He is amazed and 
dazed, and cannot guess who has been bold, and who 
has held aloof from the avaricious scramble. 

Three times every day stocks are called at the Ex- 
change, and the members measure their brain and 
nerve, their capital and credit, one against the other. 
Shares are put up and put down, irrespective of 



48 The Great Metropolis. 

values. Bulls and bears toss the prices as they would 
shuttlecocks upon the battledoors of their interest or 
caprice; and it is not uncommon for a non-paying 
railway to be fifty or a hundred above par, when a 
highly remunerative road is in the eighties or nine- 
ties. 

Stocks are what the brokers make them, and their 
varying rate is determined by a "ring." 

Wal) street grows every day richer and more com- 
manding, though fortunes are made and lost there 
every year that would buy the broadest dukedoms of 
Europe. Capital from abroad is constantly flowing to 
that great monetary centre ; while private means are 
swelling to a degree that is not wholesome, financially. 
Operators can draw their checks for millions, and can 
"carrv" such an amount of stocks as astounds the 
weaker ones of the street. The rich wax richer and 
richer, albeit, ever and anon, a monetary Nemesis 
pursues them to ruin, and brands "bankrupt" upon 
the brow that has braved the severest financial fates. 

What a long and painfully interesting history might 
be given of the fluctuations of fortune that have 
marked the strange history of the street! What gi- 
gantic operators have ruled the quarter for years, and 
gone down at last, — gone down to poverty, to mad- 
ness, to shattered health and self-inflicted death! 

Pale ghosts, if Plato's theory be true, must stalk by 
night in the silent places of- the banking bureaus, and 
long, with a longing that is their torment, for the pur- 
suits they followed on this whirling planet. 

Over non-success the pall of oblivion is thrown ; for 
Wall street is too busy to hate, and too anxious to 
despise. 




STOCK E XC H AN G E,— BEOAD STUEET. 



Wall Street. 49 

Whatever of energy and enterprise, financial daring 
and reckless speculation, lust of commercial power 
and mania for money-getting there is in the land, 
seems compressed into Wall street for half-a-dozen 
hours of the twenty-four. Out of it all grow advan- 
tages beyond the thought of those who lay wagers 
against circumstance. Wall street capital develops 
the country bounteously. The north, the south, the 
east and west go there for aid to hew, and build, and 
mine. If the bloated toad look ugly, its invisible 
jewel is precious. If Wall street have faults, — and 
they are many and grievous, — it has virtues not a few, 
and, outside of business, permits its heart to beat, and 
its hands to give, and its sympathy to heal. 

Its great power is not always used unworthily ; and 
the spire looking down upon it, and the river flowing 
by it, all day and all night, must have recollections of 
its goodness that would show the preciousness and 
poetry which are hidden in the hard environment of 
money. 

4 



CHAPTER W: 
THE POLICE. 

New York is growing more and more like Paris in 
respect to the police. It is literally governed by 
them. They have almost everything in their own 
hands, and are prone to make the law a terror to all 
but evil doers. That they have entirely too much 
power is beyond question ; and that they abuse it is a 
matter of hourly observation. But, like the World, 
they are improving ; are much better now than they 
have ever been, and are likely to continue to develop 
upward. 

It is common and easy to censure the police, who 
are neither estimable nor lovable, as a class ; but, on 
the whole, they are about as good, or as little ill, rath- 
er, as can be expected considering their calling, char- 
acter, and circumstances. We have no right to look 
for saintliness in blue uniforms and pewter badges, 
particularly when their wearers receive but $25 to 
$30 a week, and are necessarily demoralized by the 
very air they breathe. 

The reputation of the tribe is bad ; and men are 
rarely better than their reputation. They are com- 
pelled to associate with vulgarians and scoundrels of 
all grades; are exposed to every species of tempta- 
tion ; act unfavorably on each other, and have no 



The Police. 51 

restraining influences beyond their own intelligence, 
which is not very great, and their fear of exposure, 
which is not probable. 

Like every other body, they have bad as well as 
good men; and I am inclined to believe the former 
are very much in the majority. Why should they not 
be ? Who wouldn't deteriorate as a policeman ? Six 
months on the force is enough to make Bayard a 
bully and Howard a blackguard. Therefore, all who 
resist the strong tendency of their vocation are de- 
serving of extreme credit. 

Some of the greatest rogues in town can be found 
among the so-called guardians of the public peace, 
and, on the other hand, a number of men who, in 
spite of temptation, association, and misrepresentation, 
have quick sympathies, generous impulses, and kindly 
hearts. The character of a metropolitan policeman 
can generally be determined, from his physiognomy. 
Peter Smith you would trust instinctively ; for his mild 
eye, broad forehead, and clear-cut chin will not lie. 
Dennis O'Grady you would avoid after dark ; for you 
read treachery, brutality, cruelty, in the flat nose, the 
restless glance, the heavy jaw, the bull-like neck. 

The police of New York number about 2,100, inde- 
pendent of the detectives, and are for the most part 
very comely physical specimens of the race. The 
force of the entire Metropolitan District, which in- 
cludes the City, Brooklyn, Richmond, King's, part of 
Queen's and Westchester counties, has 2,566 men At 
their head is Superintendent Kennedy who has under 
him four inspectors, eighteen surgeons, forty-five cap- 
tains, ninety-three doormen, ninety-one roundsmen, 
one hundred and seventy -seven sergeants, and twenty- 



52 The Great Metropolis. 

one hundred and thirty-seven patrolmen. They are 
tall, erect, well-formed, able-bodied, chosen more for 
their muscle than their morals, for their pluck than 
their purity. They are regularly drilled, especial 
pains being taken with the Broadway squad, and form 
a very effective force for good or evil. They are 
capable of doing excellent service, as has been shown 
on numerous occasions, and with weapons in their 
hands, which they know how to use, make quite a lit- 
tle army of defense. During the August riots of 
1863, they proved themselves men of determination 
and courage ; fought the furious mob like veteran 
soldiers, and gave their lives to the preservation of 
public order and the restoration of the law of the 
land. 

The Broadway squad, composed of about one hun- 
dred picked policemen, are noticeably good-looking. 
They are very neatly attired, and, though they have 
light duty, are very serviceable in assisting women 
and children across the crowded thoroughfares, direct- 
ing strangers to different parts of the city, arresting 
pickpockets, and preventing street fights. They are 
the real autocrats of the highway, and the position is 
sought by all the members of the force ; only the 
most intelligent and best-behaved being eligible to the 
place. 

They have charge of street-incumbrances, and sign 
nuisances, and can regulate all such things as they 
choose. As Broadway is always blocked up and al- 
most impassable from the causes named, it is ftiir to 
suppose the policemen are paid for their purblindness. 
Indeed, it is generally understood that bank-notes of 
any sort have a singular effect upon policemen's eyes. 



The Police. 53 

They can't see beyond a ten or twenty-dollar note in 
the broadest light of day; and, after dusk, a bill of 
much smaller denomination not only obscures their vis- 
ion, but affects their memory. They receive, doubtless, 
very liberal douceurs in that great avenue, and their 
perquisites must be far beyond their salaries. 

The best class are usually Americans, men who 
originally entered the force because they could get 
nothing better to do, and who from long service have 
become attached to it from its alternately indolent and 
exciting character. They may not preserve their gar- 
ments unstained, nor their hands unsoiled, — that is 
above policial power, perhaps — but their sins, if venal, 
are venial also. They do not lose their instincts of hu- 
manity nor their sympathy with suffering. They keep 
many an honest fellow from the hands of sharpers, 
many a virtuous country girl from the wiles of pro- 
curesses and the arts of debauchees. 

They have abundant opportunities to do good, and 
when temptation the other way is not too strong, or 
nature too weak, they obey their better selves. Not 
unfrequently they prove themselves heroes in guard- 
ing honesty and innocence, and have yielded their lives 
to protect the defenseless and succor the distressed. 
They have time and again saved children and women 
from the flames at imminent peril to themselves; have 
snatched men from death and their sisters from worse 
than death, and been entitled by their deeds to the 
highest fame. Rarely has the chronicle been made ; 
and, when it has, it has been forgotten a moment 
after. 

The worst class, which is two, perhaps three, to one 
of the other, are generally foreigners, ignorant, brutal 



64 The Gkeat Metropolis. 

fellows, whom any elevation renders tyrants and bullies. 
They first obtained their place by partisan favor, though 
the present police are appointed by the Commissioners 
regardless of politics. They are in full sympathy and 
communion with all the rogues within sound of the City 
hall bell, and follow their calling purely to make money. 
They are fond of arresting innocent ruralists, charging 
them with some heinous offence, and frightening them 
out of their wits and pocket books at the same time. 

They are approachable by bribes, and prone to 
serve those who pay the most. They release pick- 
pockets and burglars who divide; persecute unfortu- 
nate Cyprians who refuse gratuitous favors ; steal from 
drunken men; swear to anything; levy black-mail, 
and are guilty of any mean act their low minds can 
conceive of They are usually on the scent of any 
misbehavior with which reputable persons are con- 
nected, using their knowledge to extort money by 
threat of exposure. 

Glaring as their misconduct is, they are cunning 
knaves, and contrive to keep in office when decent 
men are removed. I have heard of scoundrels who 
are veterans in the force, and who won't quit it while 
there is a dirty thing to do, or a dollar to steal. They 
are strangely long-lived, too, on the hypothesis that 
Satan stands by sinners, and rarely have their brains 
blown out, or their throats cut, as they deserve, by 
the desperate characters with whom they come in con- 
tact. Such mishaps befall only the better class, who 
are more ready to expose themselves to real dangers. 

The police-stations are 32 in number, in as many 
precincts, and are generally as clean and whole- 
some as such places can be. Their atmosphere, 



The Police. 55 

however, is repulsive at best, and a sensitive nature 
avoids them, as it does painful scenes or horrid sights. 
Their patronage varies with the season and the occa- 
sion. In certain times of quiet not more than 200 
arrests are made in the entire 24 hours; while at oth- 
ers the arrests will reach 600 or 800, or even 1,000. 
During the severe weather, lodgers, men and women 
who have no place to sleep, are very numerous. 
They huddle into the stations, ragged, dirty, shiver- 
ing, either bloated or emaciated, and convey some 
idea of the poverty and wretchedness of the Great 
City. 

Those who are committed to the stations are guilty 
of various crimes, among which drunkenness, dis- 
orderly conduct, and petit larceny are the commonest 
When a first-class burglar, or a real incendiary, or an 
actual murderer is thrust into the lock-up, his presence 
creates a momentary sensation. The meaner prison- 
ers want to catch sight of the rare monster, and peer 
at him through the iron bars. The policemen hurl 
rude jests at him, or curse him; while he either curses 
them in return, or sinks down on the rude bench in 
sullen indifference to his fate. 

Now and then a bird of higher game is taken, — a 
bank-teller or book-keeper who has been embezzling 
or forging ; a gentleman of position who has shot his 
sister's seducer or his wife's lover; a fashionable rowdy 
who has undertaken to break windows and watch- 
men's heads, with a charming indifference whether it 
is one or the other; a well-dressed man about whom 
strict orders are given, but whose offense is not stated. 
Such persons are usually treated with courtesy and 
distinction, for they have means and can pay for civil- 



56 The Great Metropolis. 

ity, and have a faculty of getting out that is impossi- 
ble to vulgar sinners and law-breakers. 

It is a sad and. revolting sight to see the station 
houses emptying themselves in the morning. The 
prisoners are a few of the unwholesome and painful 
things the night hides, and the day keeps beyond 
vision. Bleared and blackened eyes, bloody faces^ 
festering rags, horrid countenances, demouized brutes, 
hideous hags, guarded by policemen, and going to 
court, soon to be sent to the Tombs or Blackwell's is- 
land for the fifth, or tenth, or twentieth time. 

How mechanically the policemen swear (half of 
them have no idea of the solemnity of an oath, so 
accustomed are they to that form of statement), 
and how indifferent they are to the scenes and 
characters before them! They are insensible, stolid, 
brutal, very many of the class, and laugh where others 
would weep. They consider crime and its punishment 
something of course, part of their business, and to be 
encouraged, inasmuch as their livelihood depends up- 
on it. 

Unfortunate the sensitive being who from some 
stress of circumstance falls into their hands. They 
will lacerate with looks, and stab with jeers, and never 
dream of giving pain. They have walked so much 
among thorn bushes and strong hedges they do not 
suspect the existence of the violets or daisies they -are 
crushing under their feet. 

The gross injustices of a police court, every week of 
the year, would fill a small volume if enumerated in 
detail; but they are usually practised upon paupers 
and outcasts, and no one cares for them. That they 
are unfortunate and friendless, is proof of their guilt, 



The Police. 57 

and their liberty is sworn away and their sentences 
fixed, without reflection or conscience. It is the 
poKceman's duty to swear and the judge's to punish, 
and the sooner the duty is discharged the better, at 
least for themselves. 

The detectives are a peculiar and distinct part of 
the police force. There are no less than 14 or 15 
organizations (including about 400 men, with a few 
women) in the Metropolis, and its members are the 
shrewdest and most dishonest of the entire body. 
The organizations are divided into the central de- 
tective police, detectives of the separate wards or 
precincts, car-detectives, insurance and bankers' de- 
tectives police, national police agency. North- Amer- 
ican detective agency, merchants' detective police, 
bureau of information, Matsell's police-detectives, ho- 
tel-detectives, divorce-detectives, United-States detect- 
ives, internal revenue detectives. 

Their regular pay varies from three to eight dollars 
a day for "piping," "shadowing," " working-up," 
etc.; but they have such latitude in "contingent ex- 
penses," "special arrangements," and "individual en- 
terprises " that no limit can be fixed to their profits. 
The chief detectives have a salary of $2,500 a year, 
but they make five or ten times that sum often, 
and frequently acquire a large property. Bank 
officers and persons having responsible positions in 
stores are watched, the moment the least suspicion is 
excited by their conduct; and, if they are using 
money not their own, they are always found out and 
reported, unless they happen to pay the detective 
better than his employer does. 

There is a good deal of excitement and no little 



58 The Great Metropolis. 

romance in the profession of the detective. He must 
be very shrewd, understand human nature, be prolific 
of resources and inventions, cool, self-reliant, coura- 
geous, and resolute. He goes everywhere; adopts all 
disguises ; plays many parts ; combines, analyzes, ma- 
nipulates, manages, and does work often that is a 
credit to his brain and a discredit to his principle. 

Dickens, it is said, is very fond of consulting the 
detectives, who have helped him to many of his plots, 
at least in parts; and other novel-writers would do 
well to imitate the great master of fiction. The 
detective sees life and nature in its most peculiar and 
often interesting phases, and he has the capacity to 
unravel out of the tangled skein of his experiences 
threads of narratives as startling as truthful. Half 
they say would not be believed (they are fond of tell- 
ing sensational stories); but, if they merely related 
the facts that come under their daily observation, the 
public would be incredulous. 

They behold strange things unquestionably; see 
demons as angels, and angels as devils, and naturally 
learn to believe that what we call good and evil is 
merely a refraction of moral light passing through 
different mediums. 



CHAPTER V. 
THE SHIPPING. 

The bay of New-York is not surpassed by any in the 
world for excellence and beauty. The bay of Naples 
is far more famous, because there have been more 
poets to sing its praises ; but ours is quite equal, if not 
superior to the emerald crescent which has been set at 
the head of the jewels of the sea. 

To appreciate fully the bay of New-York, one should 
go abroad, and remain a year or more. After wan- 
dering over Europe and Asia, he will return with the 
love of home and freedom strengthened in his bosom ; 
and, sailing back to the great centre of the western 
world, he will catch sight of the spires looming up, 
like those of Venice, from the watery distance, and 
take in the picturesqueness of the bay, and all its 
varied charms, as he never did before. 

There is a satisfaction, a sense of largeness and 
liberty, in a sea-port that no interior city can impart. 
By the side of the ocean one feels in communication 
with the rest of the World ; on the outer surface of the 
Globe ; at the pole of civilization. Inland, one seems 
out of immediate relation with the Universe ; thrust 
aside from the current of events ; washed up from the 
billows of busy being. 

The chief advantage of New -York is its location. 



60 The Great Metropolis. 

A complete island, swept by every breeze, touched by 
ships from every clime, the great focus of wealth and 
trade, to live in it is to become attached to it, and 
grow broad by liberal influences from within and 
without. 

One of the lasting attractions of the Metropolis is 
its shipping. I have always enjoyed wandering, or 
lounging, in West or Water streets, or on the Battery, 
watching the sailing of the ships, their riding at anchor, 
their lying idle at the busy piers. Nearly two hund- 
red piers gird the island ; and the vessels, receiving 
freight therefrom, and lying off in the rivers and bay, 
often number from, fifteen hundred to two thousand. 

From the south point of the Battery to the Harlem 
river, on both sides, and all round the island, in fact is 
one unbroken forest of masts. From them, the flags 
gf every nation under the sun are flying ; and many 
of the colors would not be recognized save by persons 
familiar with the ensigns of the world. 

The cross of Great Britain, the tri-color of France, 
the eagles of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, the compli- 
cated arms of Spain, the crowned lions of Holland, the 
cross of Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland, the bars of 
Bremen, the crescent of Turkey, the checkered field 
of China, and even the crossed swords of Japan, may 
be seen floating in the air. Greece, Prussia, and 
Egypt are represented by the white cross, the lion- 
centred star and the stellar moons. 

All tongues mingle on the piers and vessels as in 
olden Babel, but they are not confused. Every for- 
eign ship has its interpreter, if he be needed, though 
many of the sailors, who have passed their lives on the 
sea, can speak enough of a dozen languages to make 



The Shipping. 61 

themselves understood. Every liour some craft is com- 
ing in from, or going out upon its long voyage. This 
for Liverpool, for Havre, for Marseilles, for Naples, for 
Constantinople, for Palermo ; that for Hong-Kong, for 
Calcutta, for San-Francisco, for Yokohama. 

With their immense and valuable cargoes, with their 
thousands of human souls, the ships trust themselves 
calmly to the treacherous deep, and, through countless 
storms and dangers, come back undaunted and un- 
harmed. Men who have, all their lives, braved the 
perils of the ocean, die at last in their hammocks or 
upon the land they have so little trodden. 

There is a species of fascination in watching the sea 
and the ships, in tracing them as they come slowly 
into sight ; rise, as it appears, gradually out of the 
waves ; or go down on the slope of the sphere, and fade 
away. We all say we believe the World round ; but 
we do not practically. We can hardly conceive tliat 
those who left us a few months since are on the other 
side of the Planet, laughing or weeping directly under 
our feet. Even when we visit China, and reason and 
science assure us we have been with our antipodes, Ave 
do not realize it any more than that we have been be- 
yond the grave in sleep. 

The sailors are an interesting class. Their life is a 
hard and dangerous one, but they cannot be induced 
to quit it. They are the true cosmopolitans. Their 
home is everywhere and nowhere. They preserve 
their freshness of feeling, their relish of pleasure, their 
love of adventure always. They are children, and 
never grow old. They have sailed in all seas and 
dwelt in all cities ; have pulled the pig-tails of China- 
men in Nanking; smoked with the Turks outside the 



62 The Great Metropolis. 

mosques of Smyrna ; drank tea with tlie Russians at 
Cronstadt, and whisky with the Irish at Cork. 

Unsuspecting, unselfish, careless, they fall an easy 
prey to sharpers and swindlers. The moment they 
touch the shore, they are resolved upon a "lark." Their 
money burns in their pockets, and when it is spent 
they are as cheerful as before, and vastly more resign- 
ed to work. Always in trouble on shore, yet always 
in superabundant spirits, they know no medium be- 
tween hard service and perfect self-indulgence. Half 
the duty of policemen in the Fourth and Sixth wards 
is to keep the sea-rovers out of mischief, and then they 
rarely succeed. 

Liquor and loose women are all too much for poor 
Jack, and, after being robbed and beaten, he is carried 
ofi" to the station-house, cursing his eyes, which deserve 
condemnation, since they are of little use to him in 
avoiding open pits. Often the master of the vessel is 
compelled to redeem Jack from bondage, and the un- 
fortunate sailor can hardly see the receding shore 
through the clouds dissipation has spread before his 
eyes. Unlike the land-lubber, he does not promise 
reformation, and, unlike the same individual, he does 
not break his promise. He keeps sober on board be- 
cause he can't get liquor. But he renews his New- 
York experience in the first port. The same tricks 
are played upon him ; the same mishaps befall him, 
and with the same result. He goes rolhng and blun- 
dering through life ; regarding the whole World as a 
quarter-deck, and resting only when he is sewed up in 
his hammock, and cast to the fishes. 

The emigrant vessels are curious studies. How 
strangely and puzzled the emigrants look as they come 



The Shipping. 63 

out of the depot at the Battery ! They are entering, 
indeed, upon a new life, and America must seem to 
them like another world. The Irish are excited and 
nervous generally, an odd compound of timidity and 
boldness ; but the air of freedom and even licentious- 
ness they soon breathe, renders them defiant and ag- 
gressive. 

The trouble with the natives of Erin is that there is 
no Purgatory between the Inferno of their own coun- 
try and the Paradise of this, that would fit them for en- 
tering upon a broader and higher mode of existence. 
The change is too sudden, and they and those brought 
in contact with them suffer from it. They rarely un- 
derstand their own interest. They are made the dupes 
of others, and their impulsiveness overrides their 
reason, and keeps them at constant disadvantage. 

Having reached our hospitable shores, they stick, 
much against their interest, to the large cities, prefer- 
ring menial offices to a prospect of independence in 
the country. No pestilence would drive them out of 
New- York. They would rather stay here, starve and 
die, than prosper in the territories. There are nearly 
as many of their fellow-countrymen here as in Dublin, 
and here they will stay, until Potter's field Or the City 
Hall receives them. 

The Germans are quiet, self-contained, half stolid, 
half wondering, when they land. They are more fre- 
quently imposed upon than the Irish ; for the latter 
find adherents and protectors in their own countrymen, 
who have become American citizens, by the blessing 
of God and the ease of the naturalization laws. Usu- 
ally they make brief sojourn in the Metropolis. They 
are agriculturally inclined, and wander off" to the West 



64 The Great Metropolis. 

to buy land and till their own soil. While their Mile- 
sian brothers are driving hacks, and digging cellars, 
and waiting on tables, the Germans are putting money 
in their purses and independence in their future. 

The emigrant vessels are often torture chambers for 
the poor creatures who take passage in them. The 
officers neglect and abuse them shamefully, and one 
tithe of the injustice and cruelty practiced upon the 
strangers will never be known. Now and then 
there is an arrest, and a fine imposed upon a captain 
or a mate, or bail required. But there the matter ends, 
and the wrong continues. 

The ill-treatment of emigrants is one of the most 
serious evils of this abounding-in-evil city ; and few 
know the horrors of a passage across the Atlantic. The 
emigrants are not only deprived of proper food and 
air, but the men are robbed, the women debauched 
and not unfrequently beaten by scoundrels from whom 
no penalty is ever exacted. 

The foreign steamers are well worth visiting on saih 
ing days. You can see much of life among the better 
kinds of people there, particularly on the French and 
English vessels. Friends always flock to the steamers 
to see those departing. Excitement is a common 
ingredient in the adieux, and sorrow, by no means in- 
sincere, a concomitant of such leave-takings. 

Step on board one of the Cunarders with me. Some 
prominent personage must be going abroad, for forty 
or fifty well-dressed women and a score of men are 
crowded around a mild, self-satisfied-looking individual 
who smiles patronizingly, and wears a white cravat. 
The women simper, and press close to him, and give 
him thousands of good wishes, and beg him to take 



The Shipping. 65 

excellent care of his health, and assure him they will 
pray for him while he is gone. 

From the conversation, we learn that he is the Rev. 
Clarence Edmund Fitzdoodle. He has been worn 
down by labors of two hours a day, with a three- 
months' vacation each Summer, and has been prevailed 
upon to go abroad to heal his shattered constitution, 
and save his precious life. No one would suspect his 
ill-health. He looks round and rosy, and his rhetoric 
on Sunday is too weak to require any serious effort. 
He has an admirable appetite and digestion, and has 
never shown any particular weakness, except for work- 
ed slippers, and other pretty presents from his pretty 
parishioners. But they have declared he must go, and 
with the air of a well-fed and well-dressed martyr he 
resigns himself to their solicitations. He declares, 
however, he would sooner die in the pulpit (the cause 
of eloquence would improve if he should) than aban- 
don any part of his duty. At this, his feminine wor- 
shipers vow he is a saint, and beg him to depart, with 
tears in their beautiful eyes. 

Fitzdoodle goes, and has, you may be assured, a 
good time. He returns in six months, having drank 
more wine than was beneficial to him, and threatened 
with gout, which he ascribes to his severe studies of 
theological works while on the Continent. 

Not far from this clergyman is a pretty brunette, 
who is parting with the "only man she ever loved." 
She tells Paul, while she leans on his arm, that her 
heart is almost breaking, and that she would'nt go, 
but that pa won't listen to her remaining behind. 
Paul is deeply touched, and so is Ida ; and they look 
at each other through tear-dimmed eyes as the steamer 



66 The Great Metropolis. 

moves off. The third day out Ida flirts with a young 
Englishman, and on the sixth forgets all about Paul, 
who is consoling himself with half-a-dozen other women, 
telling each one he doesn't care a straw for his de- 
parted dear. 

On the French steamer a pair are devoting them- 
selves to one another, and are really very fond. They 
are engaged, and on their way to visit all the wonders 
and beauties of Europe together, under the proper 
surveillance of their elders. James will kiss Mollie on 
deck by the star-light for the first three evenings, and, 
on the fourth, will hold her over the side while she is 
sick. A change in the situation, certainly ; but they 
are to be married, and they might as well have some 
of the unavoidable prose before as after wedlock. 

Here is a pale, but singularly sweet-looking woman, 
with her husband, and their friend — more hers than 
his, I fear. She is going away to break off her rela- 
tion with the man she cannot wed, but must always 
love. He has advised her to the course, and hopes 
they may have a future yet. Perhaps they will. But 
while he waits for her letter, which is to tell him of 
her return, he gets the husband's note, and, opening it, 
discovers their future is beyond this World. She is 
dead; and hope comes not to the lover's heart — for 
three months at least. 

Such is the shipping. We all send our little vessels 
out, and, to many of us, they never return. 



CHAPTER VI. 
THE ROUGHS. 

A MORE despicable, dangerous, and detestable char- 
acter tlian tbe New-York rough does not exist. He 
is an epitome of all the meannesses and vices of hu- 
manity, and capable, under pressure, of a courage des- 
perate and deadly. He is Parolles, Bobadil, and Hot- 
spur all at once, — a creature without conscience, a 
savage without the virtues of nature. He is not totally 
depraved, for total depravity is impossible ; but his 
redeeming traits are so few, only the microscope of a 
broad charity can detect them. He is a social hyena, 
a rational jackal, utterly devoid of reverence or re- 
spect, whom education does not reach, and society can» 
not tame. 

The metropolitan rough is usually American born, 
but of foreign parentage, surrounded by, and reared 
from his childhood under the worst influences, — all 
his brutal instincts stimuls-ted, and his moral being 
suifocated, for want of wholesome air. Training he 
cannot get ; education he will not have. He generally 
learns to read, however, by accident, and enjoys the 
knowledge in poring over obscene books, the Clipper^ 
and the Police Gazette. He laanages, too, by some 
mysterious means, to wri'^e a coarse kind of scrawl, 
which enables him to convey his plans to hici brother- 



68 The Great Metropolis. 

scoundrels when he is in the Tombs, or they are at 
Blackwell's Island. 

Without education, he acquires a certain degree of 
intelliofence that is almost unavoidable in the atmos- 

o 

phere of a great city ; and his experience of the worst 
phases of life makes him cunning as a fox and cruel as 
a tiger. Long before maturity, he has developed all 
the instincts of a beast of prey, and, in the midst of 
a civilized community, he roams like a wolf among a 
herd of sheep. 

The facial and cranial appearance of the rough goes 
far to establish the truth of physiognomy and phrenol- 
ogy. All the animal is in the shape of his features and 
head ; but the semblance of the thinking, cultivated, 
self-disciplined man is very nearly lost. The cheek 
bones are high ; the nose is flat ; the lips are thick and 
coarse ; the forehead low and receding ; the jaws mas- 
sive and protuberant ; the neck thick and thewy ; the 
head mostly behind the huge, prehensile ears. He is 
the exact species of animal from which a sensitive, in- 
tuitive organization would shrink, without knowing 
why. His approach in the dark would be felt as some- 
thing dangerous. Dogs and children would avoid him, 
and detectives watch him on instinct. 

How many of this class the Metropolis contains, will 
never be known. The rough, though gregarious, is 
mysterious. He is very vain, but he d3es not court 
popularity, nor seek to attract attention. Outside of 
his own degraded circle, he is not ambitious of dis- 
tinction ; for distinction increases the liability to arrest, 
and interferes with future operations. 

Probably New- York can count its roughs by thou- 
sands, though they so burrow in the slums and dens of 



The Eoughs. 69 

the town, that nothing but an earthquake will ever 
upheave them all. They delight in darkness ; and yet 
they are so numerous and varied in character that 
many woo the day ; brave the public eye ; defy pub- 
lic justice. The Fourth, Sixth, and part of the 
Eighteenth wards are their favorite haunts, albeit no 
portion of the island confines them. They are water- 
rats and land-rats, river thieves and land thieves, pimps, 
confidence men, brawlers, burglars and assassins, as 
circumstance shapes and occasion demands. 

They are reared in and trained to idleness and dis- 
sipation from their first years. They are fed on to- 
bacco and gin from childhood. Ribald song's and the 
roar of swinish carousals, in place of maternal lullabies, 
echo in their infant ears. Living much in the open 
air, and fond of rude physical sports, they grow up 
stout and hardy, in spite of bad habits and pernicious 
nurture. 

In their early teens, they find themselves lewd and 
lusty, thoroughly selfish and sensual, principled against 
work, predetermined to dishonesty and tyranny, all 
their worst passions in full play, and their sympathies 
and sensibilities latent, if not extinguished. In the 
midst of a great and wealthy city, they consider its in- 
habitants objects of prey, and discover on every hand 
the abundant means of knavish livelihood. 

To bar-rooms and brothels they tend by a natural 
law, and soon come to regard ruffians, thieves and 
prize-fighters worthy examples of imitation and objects 
of envy. Any part of their brutal education that may 
have been neglected, is readily supplied in such places 
and by such companions. The more precociously 
shameful they are, the more they are flattered and 



70 The Great Metropolis. 

coddled. Their first fight and first debauch are like 
the first honors of a college ; and they mount higher 
and higher by sinking deeper and deeper into the 
slough of degradation. 

Their earliest, as it is their latest, shame, is their con- 
nection with courtesans, upon the wages of whose 
prostitution they live, not only unblushingly, but boast- 
fully. To those poor creatures they give the little af- 
fection they are capable of— paying for pecuniary sup- 
port by abuse and outrage. To rob and beat in the 
morning, the woman whose arms they seek at night, is 
their idea of gallantry and chivalry ; and they reli- 
giously believe that any departure from such conduct 
would result in the extinction of her love. Though 
they maltreat her themselves, they do not allow others 
the precious privilege. They are her champions in- 
deed, when foreign foes invade or civil discords rise. 
And she, with the instinct of her sex, which neither 
neglect nor wrong can suppress, leans on, looks up to, 
and loves the brutal fellow who strikes her thrice for 
every kiss. Not a cyprian in the town but has her 
"lover" and protector in the shape of a rough, who, 
through laxity of law, has escaped the penitentiary, 
and, perhaps, the gallows. She cannot do without 
him, nor can he without her ; though she is noble com- 
pared to him — aye, a saint by contrast. She is branded 
as an outcast; she could not return to purity if she 
would. He might reform and be accepted to-morrow ; 
but he would not be honest if he could. 

A popular recreation with the roughs of Manhattan 
is to attend picnics unbidden, and excursions which 
quiet and orderly people originate for rational enjoy- 
ment. They make their arrangements beforehand; 



The Roughs. 71 

appoint a rendezvous upon the cars or boat, (they pre- 
fer the water journeys,) and keep peaceful until the 
place of destination has been reached. They either 
take liquor with them, or get it along the route ; and, 
arrived on the spot, they proceed systematically to cre- 
ate a disturbance, which no amount of patience or for- 
bearance can prevent. The more amiable the objects 
of persecution, the more resolved the roughs to make 
a row. In this country seekers of quarrel can always 
find it. Endurance ceases to be a virtue. Blows fol- 
low words, and the rowdies are in their natural ele- 
ment. They are on the spot in numbers, organized 
and armed, and carry things their own way by aid of 
superior strength. 

The quiet men are brutally beaten and robbed. The 
women are terrified, but their screams are silenced by 
threats. They are extremely fortunate if they escape 
outrage, which part of the programme is generally 
followed. 

Sometimes such entertainments are deferred until 
the return of the excursion. Then the train or boat 
is seized, and the rowdies do as they please ; eluding 
or defjdng the police, between whom and themselves 
there seems often to be a perfect understanding. 

One would not believe such things could happen, 
much less be repeated. But they do and are, season 
after season, and have grown so common as to cease to 
attract particular attention. That they would be pos- 
sible anywhere else, now that the days of Baltimore 
plug- uglyism are over, I have not the remotest idea. 
New- York is the great centre of disorder and lawless- 
ness, and her roughs the protected powers in her com- 
munity. 



72 The Great Metropolis. 

The rough is not a regular or professional thief; nor 
does he generally consort with thieves. His chief af- 
finities are bar-keepers, prize-fighters, harlots and ward 
politicians. He steals only when occasion requires, 
and commits crime when his ordinary means of rev- 
enue fail. He enjoys fighting when he is confident of 
victory, and relishes the beating of an inoffensive and 
unmuscular citizen as he does his morning cocktail. 
He is a trained and practised bruiser, and his youthful 
memories are of battles with boys for a drink of whisky. 
He knows all about "the ring" and its champions, and 
BelVs Life has for him all the charm of a romance. 
But for the accounts of prize-fights, it is doubtful if he 
would ever have learned to read ; but, Avith such per- 
petual promise of pleasure, he nerves himself to the 
task, and accomplishes it. 

All forms of combat please him. He would have 
enjoyed the ancient gladiatorial exhibitions like a true 
Roman, and would find as much happiness in a bull- 
fight as a born Spaniard. Cock and rat pits are his 
delight, and the fistic ropes the summit of his ambition. 
A severe, bloody dog-fight, where one savage brute 
literally chews the other to pieces, fills him with en- 
thusiasm ; and that there are no battles to the death 
with bowie-knives, he considers the broadest mark of 
the degeneracy of the times. 

No marvel he gloats over those inspiring accounts 
and cuts of the Police Gazette^ wherein Lindley Mur- 
ray is butchered in colder blood than the victims of 
burglars and midnight marauders. What pleasant 
dreams must be his, (does he ever dream ?) and how 
«5weet his reflections in tranquil hours ! 

An undetermined status is that of the rough ; for 



The Roughs. 73 

he is emphatically the creature of circumstance, so far 
as his degree of evil and crime is concerned. If for- 
tune be kind, and courtesans liberal, he may never be 
more than an amateur thief, an enthusiastic bruiser, or 
member of the City Council. But if fate and women 
frown, he will become a professional burglar and a 
murderer, and, unless the gallows interfere, end his 
days among the Aldermen or in Sing-Sing. The sole 
objection he has to the greater crimes is, that they ex- 
pose him to punishment, and sometimes compel him to 
quit New-York, which he ever cleaves to, knowing 
that nowhere else in the World is there such security 
for villains of the deepest dye. Municipal office is the 
half-way house between the rum-shop and the prison ; 
and, if the rough can lodge there, he is plucked from 
dangerous precipices. Once chosen a servant of the 
people, or plunderer of the treasury, which is the syn- 
onym in New-York, his avarice is so aroused that he 
becomes conservative. The love of money clashes 
with the love of other evil, and his greed waxes so 
rapacious that ^Drize-fights and petticoat-pensioning are 
gradually neglected. 

All our roughs are eligible to municipal office by 
reason of peculiar training and moral character ; and 
yet most of them miss their political destiny, and strike 
their penal one — or would if they got their deserts. 

Strange, how few of our roughs, who are among the 
rarest scoundrels under the sun, are brought to justice! 
They lead the most infamous lives, and die quietly in 
their beds, and have obituaries written about them as 
''old and esteemed citizens." With age they grow 
cautious, even timid, and, instead of knocking down 
unsophisticated gentlemen from the country, at un- 



74 The Great Metropolis. 

•seemly hours of the mornmg, they thrust their hands 
into the City exchequer, and. are envied and applauded 
for their skill in stealing. 

Hundreds of outrages are committed daily in this 
City, by notorious roughs ; and yet the arrests are so 
very few as scarcely to deserve mention. True, the 
papers say the offenders are "known to the police;" 
and that may be the reason they are not disturbed in 
their career of iniquity. 

Men are robbed in broad daylight ; women are vio- 
lated in the street cars ; stores and dwellings are set 
on fire ; houses are entered by burglars ; corpses are 
thrown into the river ; mysteriously murdered persons 
are sent to the Morgue. The roughs are the authors 
of those misdeeds, and are likely to be for years to 
come, without serious hindrance. Occasionally, for 
the sake of effect, one of them, like Brierly or Jerry 
O'Brien, is hanged, and the journals contain ghastly 
elaborate accounts of his execution. But others, even 
more guilty, are permitted to escape, and the saturn- 
alia of crime go on unchecked. 

No New-Yorker who goes his accustomed rounds, 
who frequents Broadway and the Avenue, the business 
and fashionable haunts, has any conception of the vol- 
canic elements of vice that are smouldering in un- 
visited and unseen places. 

The great, fierce beast pursues and finds his prey 
night after night ; and yet he slays so silently that few 
are aware of his dangerous presence. But in that 
dreary garret, in that noisome cellar, in that gilded 
lazar-house, the beast lies, half serpent, half tiger, 
coiled, crouching, ready for the deadly spring. Go 
you there, and you will start before the cruel glitter 



The Roughs. 75 

of his eyes, and the savage growl that seems to tear 
mercy to pieces. But you need have no new cause 
of alarm. He has been there for years, as fierce, as 
hungry, as potent as ever. He is constantly unsheath- 
ing his claws, and striking his victim, but noiselessly 
as death. Only at long intervals does he dare to 
emerge into the open day, and roar defiance to the 
general peace and public security. Until we kill him 
outright, until the Metropolis is purified, he may awake 
us at midnight with his mingled hiss and roar, and 
strike and strangle us in the arms of Love, and on the 
very breast of Peace. 



CHAPTER Vn. 
BLACKWELL'S ISLAND. 

Thousands of people who live in New York have 
never seen Blackwell's Island ; and quite as many, I 
venture to assert, cannot tell where it is. They hear 
it mentioned day after day ; they know it is devoted 
to penal institutions, and somewhere in the vicinity of 
the Metropolis. But whether it is in the Sound, or 
East or North river, or in the Bay, they are wholly 
ignorant. 

Time and again I have heard my fellow-passengers, 
residents of this city, inquire, while steaming to Provi- 
dence or Boston through the East river, "What place 
is that?" as they passed the pleasant-looking spot. 
And they were much surprised when informed that it 
was the notorious Blackwell's island. 

To the poor loafers, vagrants, and small rogues of 
the Metropolis,the Island, as it is called by way of dis- 
tinction, is better known. They have learned its ex- 
act location and peculiarities by sad experience ; and 
they are continually refreshing their memories by re- 
peated incarcerations, I say the poor loafers and 
small rogues, for the prosperous and great ones are 
clad in purple and fine linen, instead of striped uni- 
forms, and go to Long Branch and Europe instead of 
BlackwelFs island. 

Men not one-tenth as guilty as the dwellers amid 




Blackwell's Island. . 77 

Fifth-Avenue luxury or Grammercy-Park splendors 

have passed half their lives on 
the island, at Sing Sing, and 
Auburn ; and the wealthy and 
superior scoundrels have won- 
dered meanwhile at the depravi- 
ty of the poor. 

The island, the lower end of 
which is opposite Sixty-first 
A BLACKWELL'S ISLANDER, ^trcct iu thc East rivcr, is one 
of the pleasantest spots, to the outward eye, in the 
vicinity of the Metropolis. During seven or eight 
months of the year it is as green, and cool, and pic- 
turesque a place as one could desire to linger in. The 
skies are so fair and spotless ; the air is so soft and 
fresh ; the water so smooth and clear around it, that 
it appears quite the ideal of a Summer resort. Few 
pass it on steamers without admiring it, and declaring 
what a charming abode those villains have ; forgetting 
their own, perhaps, greater sins, and that the crime of 
the villains is only misfortune by another name. 

The early history of the island is involved in mys- 
tery and tradition. It was a favorite pleasure ground 
with the Indians, it is said, and the early Dutch set- 
tlers celebrated their festal days there with a simplicity 
characteristic of their fatherland. In 1823 it passed 
into the hands of James Blackwell, an Englishman, 
who occupied it with his family as a farm for a num- 
ber of years, and from whom it received its present 
name. About thirty-five years ago it was purchased 
by the City, and has since been employed as a prison 
for the violators of municipal ordinances. 

The buildings are of gray granite, with a few frame 



78 The Great Metropolis. 

outhouses, well constructed, spacious, airy, and as 
comfortable as such places can be. They seem decid- 
edly desirable at a distance, vastly preferable to the 
over-crowded tenement houses of the Fourth, Sixth, 
and Eighteenth wards, and induce one to believe that 
therein mercy tempers justice. But prisons are never 
handsome to persons confined in them ; and he who 
imagines the island attractive can have his illusion dis- 
pelled by a short confinement. 

The buildings are the hospital, workhouse, lunatic 
asylum, almshouse, and penitentiary. The indigent 
and the criminal have different quarters, but are treated 
in much the same manner. There is a species of 
worldly justice in this ; for poverty is the only crime 
society cannot forgive. 

The men and women are kept apart in all the build- 
ings, though they contrive to elude vigilance and get 
together often, as is shown by the fact that children are 
born there whose mothers have been on the island for 
more than a year. 

The paupers, and criminals, and lunatics vary in 
number from three to five thousand all told ; and they 
increase every year, so that some of the departments 
are greatly crowded and unhealthy in consequence. 
The care of the paupers and criminals is as good as 
could be expected; but it is anything but what it 
ought to be ; and flagrant acts of injustice, oppression, 
and even cruelty are not uncommon. * 

It is usual, in writing about superintendents, over- 
seers, wardens, and turnkeys of charitable and penal 
institutions, to speak of them as humane and sympa- 
thetic, which they very rarely are. I have seen a 
good deal of this class, and I have often found them 



Blackwell's Island. 79 

hard, unfeeling and tyrannical, and not unfrequently 
brutal and cruel to the last degree. Their position is 
not calculated to develop the sensibilities or refine the 
sentiments, and they do not enter upon their duties 
with any surplus of charity or tenderness. To expect 
the cardinal virtues of them is unreasonable. If they 
were fine or gentle natures, they would not be there ; 
for saints do not gravitate to the custodianship of pris- 
ons and poor-houses, any more than vestals do to 
stews. 

I seldom see men or women in such a place, partic- 
ularly the former, without an instinctive shrinking from 
them. Their faces, their manner, their voices betray 
them generally for what they are. I cannot but pity 
the unfortunate committed to their keeping, subjected 
to their power. 

The attaches of Blackwell's island are not excep- 
tions. I have read their praises in the papers, from 
the pens of partial reporters ; but those praises were 
for the most part either the blunders of ignorance or 
the result of premeditated misrepresentation. 

The hospital is a stone building, 400 by 50 feet, and 
usually contains 200 to 400 patients suffering from 
every form of disease. They are fairly cared for ; their 
beds clean ; their diet wholesome, and medical atten- 
tion good. They are ranged on little iron bedsteads 
in long rows, and are melancholy-looking enough ; for 
little intelligence or moral culture illumines their pale 
and wasted faces. 

The mortality among them is large, because they 
have abused themselves or been abused sadly by se- 
verity of circumstance. Many of them have been 
drunkards and outcasts from their birth : others have 



80 The Great Metropolis. 

inherited broken constitutions and ancestral disease ; 
and all have come into being out of parallel with na- 
ture — organization and destiny against them. 

Death can have few terrors for them (it is always 
less fearful when near than at a distance); and I do not 
marvel they breathe their last with perfect resignation, 
or that they pass out of life cursing all that has been 
and is to come. • 

Sickness is ever painful. But sickness there, with- 
out hope, without means, without sympathy, without 
future, without friends, must be agony unrelieved. 

Their logic must be this : What have they lo dread 
from change ? What other sphere can be worse than 
this to them ? If God be powerful. He must gradually 
lift their burthens. If He be good, He will not punish 
them ; for they have already suffered beyond their sin. 
And if He be not, then they will not be either. What 
then have they to fear ? 

The workhouse much resembles the other buildings. 
It is gray, granite, grim. Its inmates vary from 600 
to 800, fully half of whom are women ; though fe- 
males would be the fitter word, inasmuch as woman 
suggests gentleness, tenderness, and lovableness, — 
qualities in which the island is deplorably deficient. 

Persons are sent there for minor offenses, such as 
drunkenness, disorderly conduct, carrying concealed 
weapons, vagrancy, and the like. Very few of the in- 
mates that have not been there again and again. They 
are sentenced for 30, 60, or 90 days, and at the end of 
this term they are discharged only to be brought back 
for a similar offense before the week is fairly gone. 

A number of the men are employed at trades. 
They make clothes, or shoes or brooms ; but most of 



Black well's Island. 81 

them are engaged in quarrying or flirming upon the 
island. They assist in repairing the different structures 
and raise vegetables for home consumption. 

The women make hoop-skirts and braid straw ; do 
the necessary cleaning, and wash and iron for the other 
prisoners and paupers. Many seem quite contented, 
and are very different creatures from what they are 
when intoxicated ; intoxication usually being the cause 
of their commitment. Some of the men and women 
have been sent to the island 30, 40, even 50 times, and 
are doomed to die there. They have no restraining, 
no reforming influences ; and they return to their old 
ways and habits by the same law that impels the tides 
of the sea. 

The almshouse includes forty acres, almost a third of 
the entire island, and has 800 to 1,000 inhabitants; the 
men generally being in the majority. Both sexes are 
worthless creatures, and their surroundings remind one 
of the perpetual palaver of Mrs. Gummidge, whose 
constant apprehension was, that she ^vould be "sent to 
the House." Their advanced age is particularly no- 
ticeable, and you wonder how such poverty and dis- 
tress can have sustained life so long. They are with 
rare exceptions extremely ignorant ; have been born 
to the fate they follow ; have always had for familiar 
companions stupidity, squalor and sin. 

Nineteen-twentieths of them are foreigners, the Irish 
being the most largely represented. And at least half 
of them came paupers to our shores. Not a few, how- 
ever, were once industrious and honest, and have been 
prevented from earning a livelihood by loss of health 
or some accident that has maimed them. 

The baby department attached to the alms-house has 

6 



82 The Great Metropolis. 

usually about 200 little cliildren who have either been 
taken there with their mothers, or found without pa- 
rents. They are generally from a few months to two 
or three years old, and are great favorites with and 
pets of the aged, and even the younger women. Such 
is the maternal instinct of the sex that no deprivation, 
nor suffering, nor adversity, nor degradation can sup- 
press it wholly. 

Ill-natured stories are afloat that some of the infants 
are, strictly speaking, home productions; but those 
who are acquainted with the purity and continence of 
the attaches will not be slow to pronounce such stories 
vile slanders. 

The penitentiary is an enormous building, and con- 
tains at present about 600 inmates — all masculine. 
They are employed very much as their companions in 
the workhouse, though they are more closely watched, 
and the discipline is more severe. They rise at 6 in 
the morning, and after breakfast, they begin their tasks 
and labor until nearly 6 in the evening. When they 
have taken their not very savory supper, they are 
locked up in their cells over night. They are attired 
in striped uniforms, and for refractory conduct they are 
put on bread and water diet and confined in dark dun- 
geons. Most of the criminals are ruffians and thieves 
who have been committed for serious assaults, stab- 
bing, shooting and stealing. They are a hopeless and 
graceless set, the greater part at least, and are usually 
fitted there for the higher honors of Sing-Sing. 

Very many of them are quite young, and the gen- 
erality in good health and of excellent physique. But 
their fices, especially their eyes, indicate their charac- 
ter, and strengthen faith in the truth of physiognomy. 



Blackwell's Island. 83 

You can see now and then, a strange mixture of cun- 
ning and boldness, of restlessness and desperation in 
their repulsive countenances, and you feel those men 
are capable of any crime under temptation or oppor- 
tunity. 

A strange, sad place is Blackwell's island. After 
going there you are relieved when you return on the 
ferry and feel the breeze from the sea blowing through 
your hair as if to purify you from the unwholesome 
atmosphere you have just breathed. You look back at 
the island, and all its beauty is gone. Never again 
does it seem picturesque ; for you see through its out- 
side down to its black and cankered heart. 



r 



CHAPTER VIII. 
THE FIRST OF MAY. 

The first of May, generally associated in this coun- 
try with all the sweetness, and beauty, and gladness 
of spring, is in New York associated only with change 
of residence, and the countless vexations and disa- 
greeablenesses of moving. 

Elsewhere, children hail the day with delight, and 
mature persons look back to it with pleasure as a cor- 
onation of youth and a celebration of the heart. 
Here, we consider ourselves merely May Day's victims, 
despoiled of the flowers, and deem the occasion so 
ungrateful, that we expel it from the memory as far as 
possible, until its unavoidable return forces itself upon 
our attention. 

Of all the days of the year, the first of May is the 
most hateful in the Metropolis. This City will never 
be quite happy until that date is either obliterated 
from the calendar, or the custom that deforms it be 
abolished. While the country goes Maying with 
floral chaplets and winged steps, and aiiy laughter, 
the Metropolis turns itself upside down ; exchanges 
houses; is disheveled and disgusted, for at least a 
week of the month of beauty and of blossoms. 

By what malignant and mysterious agency the cus- 
tom of moving on the first of May was ever estab- 
lished in this unfortunate city, has never been accu- 



First of May. 85 

rately ascertained. It is supposed, however, to have 
originated, as did many other things, good and evil, 
with the early Dutch settlers here, who must have 
borrowed it from Satan or the demon of discord, for 
the especial affliction of unregenerate mankind. That 
such an inconvenient, unreasonable and expensive 
habit should have been continued to this day, in the 
face of perpetual complaint and annual protest, is 
singular enough, and can only be regarded as one of 
the phenomena of life in Manhattan. The constant 
advance, however, in real estate and house-rents on 
this Island for five-and-twenty, particularly the last 
ten years, has had much to do with the perpetuation 
of the annoyance in all probability. Tenants have 
been unwilling to take a house, whose rent they deem 
exorbitant, and which, they are convinced, must be 
lower the subsequent year — for a longer period than 
a twelve-month. Every May they discover their mis- 
take ; but hope springs immortal in the human breast 
of house-renters, and every May they repeat their 
blunder, under the delusion that prices must sometime 
be reasonable, and that landlords must have con- 
sciences. When rents do fall, if that metropolitan 
milennium should ever be, then tenants will expect a 
continuous decline, and will be unwilling to occupy 
their dwellings beyond a single year. So until the 
end of this generation at least. New York is likely to 
be annually cursed with its May moving. 

If Othello had lived in Gotham his reference to 

— "moving accidents by flood and field 

would have been more significant and impressive than 
it possibly could be in the romantic city by the sound- 
ing sea. 



86 The Great Metropolis. 

A privileged class, if not one absolutely blessed, is 
that which owns its houses. But, in New- York, to 
own a house is, to a man of ordinary means or ordi- 
nary prospects, much like the possession of Alladdin's 
palace. Few can hope for it; fewer still can realize 
that comfortable dream. 

A good, convenient dwelling, with modern im- 
provements, is worth a small fortune on this Island. 
Few can be had less than $20,000, and from that the 
price rises to the region of financial fable. Nineteen- 
twentieths of the people here might therefore as 
rationally expect to have Stewart's income, or be 
genuine heirs of Aneke Jans, as to find themselves 
holders in fee-simple of a private dwelling in any 
"respectable" quarter of the town. 

The owner of a home anywhere within a radius of 
twenty -five miles of the City Hall is to be, and is, 
deeply and excusably envied, less perhaps for his 
material means than for the ever-present consolation 
which must be his, that he is not compelled to move 
on the first of May. That is one of the dearest and 
sweetest privileges of wealth near the confluence of 
the East and North rivers; and they who do not 
deem it such cannot long have dwelt in this American 
Bable. 

During the three months between what is known 
here as quarter-day — Feb. 1 — and moving time, I 
have seen amiable and self-disciplined persons, en- 
gaged in house-hunting, look sullen and angry as they 
passed the stately mansions of the prosperous, — won- 
dering, no doubt, and indignant, that unequal Fortune 
had permitted those to live in New-York without 
exacting the usual penalty. "If I only had a house," 



The First of May. 87 

is the burthen of a Gothamite's prayer, "that I could 
call mine, Wall street might fluctuate, and the World 
come to an end as soon as it pleases." 

It must not be supposed that all prosperous citizens 
of New York own houses; for it is quite the contrary. 
Many whose incomes are as great as fifty and a hun- 
dred thousand dollars, rent and submit to the peri- 
odical nuisance of moving. Why they do this, is 
among the enigmas of humanity, since common sense 
and reason are against it. But they do: they often 
rent furnished dwellings at so extravagant a rate that 
they pay, every two or three years, a sujBficient extra 
sum to buy their own furniture. Economy is not a 
virtue of the Metropolis, and thousands of its denizens 
live as if their chief purpose were to see how much 
money they could needlessly squander. 

As a consequence. May moving is miscellaneous 
and democratic, confined to no class, restricted to 
no quarter. The whole island moves, from the Bat- 
tery to Harlem, from Hanover square to Carmansville. 
On the first of that month, the Metropolis plays a 
colossal game of what children call " Pussy-wan ts-the- 
corner"; and the poor pussy who is left out after that 
day is compelled to move from town or into a hotel, 
until another opportunity is offered. 

For two months, especially for a few weeks pre- 
vious to the appalling first, New-York is searched for 
houses. Brooklyn, Jersey City, Weehawken, Hobo- 
ken, Hudson City, and all the suburbs for miles 
around, are explored by anxious and restless renters. 
Women, having more leisure, more patience, and 
more energy often, are generally the Iiohigenias on 
whom housG-hunting falls. 



88 The Great Metropolis. 

Poor creatures, their days and weeks, and no small 
part of their lives, are consumed in the endless seek- 
ing. They rise early and retire late. They visit 
real-estate agencies every hour. They pore over 
advertisements. They have visions of houses by day. 
They dream of houses by night. They walk, talk, 
eat, sleep and wake with houses. Houses, houses 
everywhere, and not a house to rent. 

" Is it not pitiful, 
In a whole city full," 

that shelter can not be had for love or money, — 
at least for any sum they can command ? 

Nearer and nearer comes the dreaded day, and no 
roof for the family long notified to vacate. What can 
its members do? What will they? Where shall they 
go? Time waits for no man. Houses present them- 
selves for no woman. Each April our citizens and 
the newspapers declare a large number of New-York- 
ers will have to go into the street, sleep in the parks, 
or move to the Catskills. But they do not some- 
how, and hence an increased faith in an overruling 
Providence. 

"Everything will be got along with," is. a col- 
loquial consolation that all experience of life confirms. 
When the pressure or strain is too great, Nature 
yields, and a space is made in the World by another 
grave. Come weal or woe, tragedy or comedy, birth 
or death, our Common Mother regards it not. It is 
all the same to her. She looks calmly, unchangingly 
on, whether her children weep or smile, love or hate, 
rejoice or despair. 

For weeks before the first every sort of vehicle 
capable of carrying furniture or household goods is 



The First of May. 89 

engaged to move the unlucky wights of the Metropo- 
lis. That day is the carmen's harvest, and they profit 
by it by advancing their rates to a point to which 
nothing but necessity would submit. 

People often begin for days before, and continue 
for days after, the first to transfer their goods and 
chattels to each other's houses. Jones moves into 
Brown's house, and Brown into Jones', and both are 
dissatisfied. Smith and Robinson exchange dwellings, 
and anathematize landlords and wonder what they 
were foolish enough to do so for. They vow they 
never will be guilty of such an absurditv again, and 
they are not — until next year. 

Go into any street and you will find cars before 
most of the houses, where carmen and servants are 
quarreling in choice Celtic about the proper quantity 
of a load, or the careless manner of arrancfinir furni- 
ture, while the mistress of the household stands on the 
stoop, or in the window, looking soiled and frowsy, 
anxiety in her face and a dust-cloth in her hand. 

Windows and doors are open all along the block ; 
tables, carpets, chairs, bedsteads, pier-glasses, pictures, 
are standing in the halls, on the steps, on the side- 
walks, waiting for the next load. The houses have a 
generally dismantled, deserted, forlorn appearance, 
that is melancholy and oppressive. Domestics are 
visible taking down curtains, or rolling up carpets; 
while the feminine memjbers of the household direct, 
a«d often lend a helping hand. 

In the tenement quarters, the process of moving is 
conducted more speedily, because less carefully and 
methodically, and the poor have slender appliances 
either for happiness or comfort. Here, all is con- 



90 The Great Metropolis. 

fusion. The carmen swear, and the movers reply in 
kind, and not infrequently a miscellaneous fight arises, 
in which most of the furniture is broken by its con- 
version into weapons, offensive and defensive. The 
corner grocery is periodically visited, and the stimu- 
lants used to assist in the task of moving not seldom 
prevent the need of moving, and necessitate the ser- 
vices of the surgeon and apothecary. 

How poor and suffering humanity swarms in those 
tenement-houses! One sees dozens of families drip- 
ping darkly out of dwellings into which he would not 
suppose so many could possibly crowd. No wonder 
they want to go out of those unwholesome places. 
But they are going into others equally unwholesome. 
They pass from dirt to dirt, from poison to poison, 
from disease to disease, until at last Death, like a 
good angel, takes them away, and hides them forever 
in the garden of God. 

The genius loci is evidently not the genius of Amer 
ica. We descendants and mixtures of Saxons and 
Normans, like the Romans described by Livy, carry 
our fortunes and destinies with us. We have no 
attachment to place. To us, locality has no interest 
or sacredness. 

In this City, where all life is intensified, perhaps 
there is a fitness in this annual vacation of abode, — 
representing in excess the American restlessness and 
fondness for change. The blood of the old Norse 
sea-kings that is in our veins, makes the broad World 
our home, all lands and scenes our highways and pas- 
ture-fields. 

Yet is there something sad in this cleaving to noth- 
ing, this tearing up of the heart, so to speak, before it 



The First of May. 91 

has taken root anywhere. Every place must have 
associations; every dwelling its experiences and mem- 
ories, often sweet, oftener bitter, yet seeming sacred 
through the light and darkness of gathered years. 

In this moving from the spot we have called even 
for a year our home, where, perchance, the loved 
have died, or more painful still, love itself has per- 
ished; where the heart has throbbed with new joys, 
and the eyes been blinded with old griefs, there is a 
sorrow that cannot be all repressed. And when we 
pass the familiar house, now filled with strangers, it is 
not strange a vision of the past gleams like the light 
out of the windows, and makes us too sad for tears. 



CHAPTER IX. 



STREET. VENDERS. 

The wag who informed the rustic inquisitor about 
the object of his visit to the Metropolis that, if he 
liked the City, he intended to buy it, might well have 
been serious. He could easily have purchased the 
whole island and all it contained, if he had only had 
money enough. 

The first impression one gets of cities, but partic- 
ularly of New York, is, 
that everything in them 
is for sale. All the per- 
sons you meet seem 
bent on bargaining. 
All signs, all faces, all 
advertisements, all voic- 
es, all outward aspects 
of things, urge you to 
buy. The old woman 
in cheap and faded rai- 
ment, who spreads her 
gewgaws at the corner, 
is no more in the mar- 
ket than her smugly- 
dressed sister who rolls 
by in a carriage, with 
her daughter at her 

TTIIBBELLAS! 




Street Venders. 93 

side. "Pay me my price," says every vender, "and 
you shall have my wares, whether they be happiness 
or houses, love or locomotives, wives or wallets." 

One would think the miles and miles of stores and 
shops of every kind would preclude the need or pos- 
sibility of street-venders in the Metropolis, But those 
commercial skirmishers whose mart is the sidewalk, 
and who cover their heads with the sky, increase in 
numbers every month. They are the Bohemians of 
trade, the Bedouins of traffic. Like ^neas after the 
downfall of Troy, they carry their fates with them. 
All they ask of Fortune is clear weather and a crowd- 
ed thoroughfare. They do not advertise, nor manage, 
nor manoeuvre. They plant themselves on their in- 
stincts, according to Emerson's counsel, and the World 
comes round to them every twenty-four hours. No 
one would imagine the hundreds of street-venders 
could live here, and it is a perpetual marvel how they 
do. Many of them rarely seem to sell anything ; and 
yet the fact of their remaining in their calling proves 
that it is remunerative. 

The Broadway venders are the most noticeable and 
numerous. The curb-stone merchants and lamp-post 
dealers border the great thoroughfare from Morris 
street to Thirtieth, where the throng lessens into a 
line. Their wares are light, such as they can pack up 
at the earliest rain-fall, and retire with into unseen 
haunts. Their stock is perishable, and the native 
elements are its enemies. 

Among the most conspicuous are the news dealers, 
who have all the daily and weekly journals published 
in the City that are supposed to have any general in- 
terest. Newspapers are an American necessity. A 



94 The Great Metropolis. 

true American can dispense with his breakfast and din. 
ner, or regular sleep, but not with his newspaper. If 
he go to business without having read the morning 
journal, he feels at a loss. Conscious of being behind 
his fellows, he avoids them until he can get into a 
corner and devour the main features of the news. Then 
he is armed with the latest intelligence; has his opin- 
ions, his prejudices, his sympathies; is prepared for 
the strife of the day. 

The news-dealer knows how to arrange his supplies. 
A single glance takes in the contents of his stand. 
The more flashy his literature, the greater its display. 
The regular issues — Herald., Tribune^ Times., World., 
Sun, and the rest — are folded modestly in a corner ; 
so are the Nation, Bound-Table, Independent, Ledger, 
Harpers' Frank Leslie^s, and the better class of week- 
lies. But the Days' Doings, Clipper, Sunday News, 
Mercury and Police Gazette are flamuigly arrayed, with 
their sensational contents cunningly revealed. 

As the human tide descends, the heaps of papers 
rapidly diminish. There is no conversation between 
buyer and seller. The money is laid down, the jour- 
nal taken up, and the change given, without a word. 
You might tell from the appearance of the purchaser 
what paper he wanted. This is a Herald, this a Tri- 
bune, that a World reader. You can see each one's 
particular need in his face. That affected person, with 
a slightly finical air, wishes the Home Journal of course. 
That crimson, sensual face is searching for the Days 
Doings and its cheap sensations. This low brow and 
hard, cruel eye are in quest of the Clipper. This neat- 
ly-dressed, jockey-looking individual, seizes on the 
Spirit of the Times; and that dull, heavy fellow will 



Street- Venders. 95 

have nothing but the Police Gazette and its hideous 
array of revolting crimes. 

Flower merchants, usually girls and women, are the 
neighbors of all the hotels seven or eight months in 
the year. Their bouquets are pretty and cheap, but ill- 
arranged ; and that they sell so many shows a love of 
the poetic and beautiful which money-getting cannot 
suppress. No city in the World has so many flower- 
buyers as New-York. Half Broadway wears them in 
its button-hole, and the other half gets them to illus- 
trate the relation between women and flowers; for 
men who purchase often, purchase for a feminine mar- 
ket, you may be sure. 

Here is the new-made husband. Every afternoon 
he carries a bouquet to his young wife, Avhose heart is 
in her ear while she waits for his coming. But it will 
not last long. When the honeymoon is over, — and it 
is sadly brief in most cases, — no more flowers, no more 
watching eyes, no more bounding hearts. 

Here is the husband of ten years, the father of a 
little family. He buys flowers still, and for one he 
loves, but not his spouse. Passion, not sympathy, 
united him and his wife. Passion sated, the bond was 
severed, and a new affinity was found. The wife sleeps 
soundly while he lies in a rival's arms. She suffers not 
from jealousy or neglect; for she also is cured, and 
smiles at disloyalty which may one day be hers as 
well. 

If we could trace the course of the flowers, it would 
be interesting. They go to sweet faces and soft bow- 
ers, are kissed by warm lips, and breathed upon by 
balmy breaths. They stand to many women for the 
love they feel, and which prompted their giving. They 



96 The Great Metropolis. _ 

are treasured while they last, and regretfully thrown 
away. They are talked to in the silence of the night, 
and told^ dear secrets their bestowers do not share. 
The history of flowers is the history of hearts. Beauti- 
ful in their freshness and blossoming, they wither all 
too soon, and when withered are forgotten and thrust 
aside. ' 

The flower-merchants are no more like their wares 
than musicians are like music. They see no special 
beauty in the blossoms. Neither color nor fragrance 
appeals to them. The flowers represent food and 
shelter only. The hard necessities of life leave no 
space for the culture of the ideal. 

The toy-sellers are objects alike of contempt and 
wonder. There they stand, stalwart, healthy men, all 
the day long, blowing whistles or trumpets, handling 
scarlet balloons, jerking wooden figures, spinning tops 
on plates, twirling paper wheels, and crying in a deep, 
guttural tone, "All alive, all alive; only ten cents; 
beautiful invention; who would be without one?" 
They must know New-Yorkers to be the children that 
they are. How otherwise could they expect to sell 
such gimcracks to adults? The crowd sweeps up and 
sweeps down. No one seems to heed the peddlers of 
trifles, much less to buy. And yet they must have cus- 
tomers; for they are there to-morrow, and next week, 
and next year, neither emaciated, nor despondent, nor 
doubtful of their dignity. 

It is marvelous they can rest content with such a 
life. They do not blush, nor stammer, nor apologize. 
They look boldly at the open day, and bellow like 
giants over their baubles. One would think it harder 
than cracking stone on the highway, drearier than con- 



Street- Yenders. 97 

finement on Blackwell's island, darker than the shadow 
of the Morgue. But perhaps it is their place in the 
World. Some men are born to shape events, and oth- 
ers to sell toys. 

Dog and bird-fanciers are common in Broadway and 
elsewhere. They are foreigners usually, as are most 
of the street-venders, and have a patient, stolid and 
unexpectant look. They ask no one to purchase; but 
they stand in the sunshine, with puppies in their arms, 
and cages in their hands, as if trusting to the instincts 
of the dumb creatures for appeal. I have seen kind- 
hearted men glance at the gentle eyes of the dogs and 
the hard faces of their keepers, and buy out of sym- 
pathy and pity. The birds appear happier than their 
holders. They flit about and sing, and yet seem 
grateful when they are sold, as southern slaves were 
wont to do when they passed from the ownership of a 
hard master. 

Women are usually the customers of that class. 
They are always wanting pets, and they will get them 
with money if they come not of themselves. The 
feathered bipeds are quicker of sale than the stouter 
quadrupeds, and often exchange the open street for 
dingy rooms and upper attics, where they forget their 
song and perish from neglect. 

The Chinese, who deal in candy and cigars, are 
conspicuous among the street-venders. They have a 
strangely lonely, forlorn, dejected air. They rarely 
smile. They are the embodiments of painful resigna- 
tion, and the types of a civilization that never moves. 
Their dark, hopeless eyes, their sad faces, high cheek- 
bones, square, protuberant foreheads, remind you of 
melancholy visages cut in stone. They sell cheaply, 



98 The Great Metropolis. 

and their profit is in pennies. They live by what an 
American would starve upon ; for they are the most 
saving and economical of their kind. The closest Ger- 
mans are spendthrifts to them. They have no care for 
comforts, or cleanliness even. They occupy garrets or 
cellars in Park or Baxter streets, and dawdle their way 
through meanness, and filth, and isolation, to an un- 
bought grave. 

Miscellaneous wares, such as cravats, suspenders, to- 
bacco, nuts, fruits, cheap jewelry, are disposed of by 
the peripatetic school. Its members have no stand. They 
roam up and down Broadway, and, with an instinct of 
physiognomy, detect the appetites and requirements 
of passers-by. Men, women and children lead that 
life. There are scores of them ; and they all subsist 
somehow, though their entire stock, sold at the max- 
imum rate, would not pay for a day's board at a Broad- 
way hotel. They are satisfied with their slender gains, 
apparently. They look calm and contented, compared 
to* the prosperous ones who hurry anxiously and nerv- 
ously along. They adapt themselves to their condi- 
tions, and, expecting little, get it, and are not disap- 
pointed. 

The old-clothes hawkers do not frequent the better 
portions of the town. They go where their cast-off 
garments will find a sale. They carry sacks, and cry 
in an unintelligible way their second and third-hand 
wares. They are ever ready for a trade. They will 
exchange an old hat for a broken pair of boots, a one- 
armed coat for threadbare pantaloons, and see a bar- 
gain where there are merely rags. Whether they have 
hats, or shoes, or gowns, or bonnets, for they vend the 




CHINESE CANDY DEALER. 



Street- Venders. 99 

attire of both sexes, they announce their goods in the 
same tone, and in the same unintelligible syllables. 

Who are their customers? Thompson, Greene, Mul- 
berry, James and Cherry streets, much of the Fourth 
and Sixth wards, part of the Eighteenth, Mackerelville, 
Corlear's Hook, — three-quarters, perhaps, of the whole 
Metropolis. 

Park Row and the Bowery are favorite localities for 
street-venders of the cheapest sort. They offer every 
kind of low-priced article, from a dog-eared volume to 
a decayed peanut. They furnish impromptu dinners 
and breakfasts for a shilling; prepare oyster-stews 
while you take out your pocket-book, and bake waffles 
while you determine the time of day. They dispose 
of frozen custards and sour milk, sweetened, for ice- 
cream; soda-water without gas; lemonade without 
lemons; songs without sentiment; jokes without point; 
cigars innocent of tobacco, and all manner of shams, 
making sales profitable by niggardliness. 

Indeed, those quarters are the best adapted for 
street-venders, who in Broadway rarely find purchasers 
except among strangers and the transient class that 
believe they must buy something when they come to 
the Babel of Manhattan. 



CHAPTER X. 
THE FERRIES. 

About twenty-five ferries connect New York with 
its surrounding cities and towns, which are divisions 
of the Metropohs as much as Harlem, Yorkville, or 
Carmansville. Nearly half a million of people whom 
Manhattan holds, and makes life and fortune for, 
dwell within a radius of five miles from Printing 
House Square as a center. The fifteen or sixteen 
towns clustering along the Bay and around the North 
and East rivers, are merely the human overflow of 
New York's inundation. 

Brooklyn, never thought of here, apart from the 
Metropolis, has a population of 300,000, and is the 
third city in the United States. Jersey City, Hobo- 
ken, Hudson City, Bergen, are good-sized towns ; but 
they have no distinct existence. They are absorbed 
by the great Centripetal power of Gotham. 

Of the ferries nine are to Brooklyn, from Catharine 
Slip, foot of Fulton, Wall, Jackson, Whitehall, New 
Chambers, Roosevelt, East Houston and Grand streets ; 
two to Hoboken, foot of Barclay and Christopher 
streets; two to Jersey City, foot of Courtlandt and 
Besbrasses streets ; two to Hunter's Point, from James 
slip and foot of East Thirty-fourth street; two to 
Staten Island, foot of Whitehall and Dey streets ; two 
to Green Point, foot of East Tenth and East Twenty- 



The Ferries. 101 

third streets ; Hamilton avenue ferry, foot of White- 
hall street; Bull's Ferry and Fort Lee, pier 51 North 
river ; Mott Haven, pier 24 East river ; Pavonia, foot 
of Chambers street, and Weehawken, foot of West 
Forty-second street. 

The most crowded are the Fulton, Wall and South 
ferries to Brooklyn, and the Courtlandt street to Jer- 
sey-City ; though all of them do a very profitable busi- 
ness, and consider their privilege, or right, better than 
exclusive ownership in a mine of gold. They do not 
say so openly; for all corporations that make large 
sums of money put forward the assumption of benefit- 
ing the public for a very small consideration. 

It is singular how disinterested monopolies are. In- 
stead of confessing that they have no souls, they de- 
clare they are all soul. They are the embodiment of 
generosity, chivalry, self-sacrifice. Their controllers 
exist only for the people. They suffer to serve the 
masses. They shed tears of blood when the dear 
public is not pleased with their magnanimous labors. 
They sympathize with it, with full stomachs and fuUer 
purses. 

Half a million of people living outside of, and most 
of them doing or having business in, New- York, make 
the ferries the sole means of communication with the 
island. It is not difficult to perceive that the different 
companies must realize handsomely from their invest- 
ments. It is calculated that 250,000 to 300,000 per- 
sons come and go upon the ferries every 24 hours, and 
that they make a clear profit of about $1,000,000 per 
annum. 

The fare to Brooklyn is two cents ; to Jersey-City, 
Hoboken and Weehawken, three ; to Staten-Island, ten 



102 The Great Metropolis. 

and twelve cents ; and to other points, in proportion 
to distance. The rate is low, but the aggregate re- 
ceipts swell to tempting sums in the course of a season. 
About 4 o'clock the ferries begin their regular trips, 
though some of them, as the Fulton and Courtlandt 
and Barclay streets, run all night, and their passengers 
increase until 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning. Then they 
fall off until 3, or 4, or 5 in the afternoon, when the 
refluent tide sets in. 

People generally rise according to their necessities. 
The poorer the man the earlier he gets up. To lie in 
bed is one of the privileges of wealth. The operator 
who saunters leisurely into Broad street at noon is be- 
lieved to have been fortunate in his speculations, and 
can borrow money at a lower figure than if he became 
visible at 10. But the wight that hustles about Ex- 
change place at 9 o'clock is regarded with distrust, 
and his broker calls in the loans made to him unhesi- 
tatingly the week before. 

When the coming dawn drops her gray mantle over 
the mists of the rivers, the gardeners and farmers, from 
Long-Island and New-Jersey, drive their carts and 
wagons, loaded with fruits and vegetables and farm 
products, upon the ferries, and wend their way to 
Fulton, Washington, Catharine, Essex, Jefferson and 
Tompkins markets. Many of them are Germans, par- 
ticularly the gardeners,— patient, thrifty, plodding, 
ever on the alert to catch the worm that creeps where 
pennies are to be gathered. They are accompanied 
by their wives, or mothers, or sisters, or daughters. 
Women from fatherland work side by side with the 
men, and look anxiously at the sky to see if the 
weather promises fair, for storms seriously affect sales, 



The Ferries. 103 

and therefore disturb the Teutonic heart. In two hours 
the ferries are freighted with market wares. Then 
they carry over a few belated venders, who look vexed 
and sour because of their own delay, and are inclined 
to vent their feelings upon others, while the odor of 
fruits and vegetables is blown away by the sea breeze. 

Farmers and hucksters are succeeded by a throng 
of mechanics with their flannel and check shirts, with 
buckets and begrimed appearance — many of them 
going from their tenement-house homes in the Great 
City to the grim factories trembling and throbbing 
along the half-awakened rivers. 

Occupation is healthful, but toil is unwholesome ; 
and the daily hard tasks that cannot be lessened or 
deferred leave their marks upon those overworked 
men. They are not satisfied with their lot. Why 
should they be ? Why should they be enslaved for a 
mere livelihood, for the privilege of continuing an 
existence they have neither the leisure nor the means 
to enjoy ? 

vSix days in every week it is the same — ten hours 
of toil, engrossing and consuming toil, when they in 
no sense belong to themselves, — the dragging home 
of their tired bodies, heavy and often unrefresh- 
ing sleep, and the compulsory return to the hateful 
labor which yields them only bread. Even their 
wives and children are sources of anxiety as much as 
of comfort ; for they can see no period, however re- 
mote, when freedom and ease will be theirs. 

They are honest and industrious, and ought to be 
happy, no doubt. But I question if they are. I 
know I could not be, if I were they. They do not 
give the impression of supreme felicity, but rather of 



104 The Great Metropolis. 

men who have duties to perform for others, and who 
would be glad when they could lie down and sleep 
forever. 

Until 7 o'clock the stream to the factories in the 
great and small cities flows turbidly. Then it stops, 
and the shirts of passengers begin to whiten and rai- 
ment to improve. 

The mechanics are followed by salesmen, account- 
ants, clerks, most of whom are young and seem hope- 
ful. Life is before them yet, and this World has not 
been shorn of its illusions. They have views of finan- 
cial success, of partnership, of high reputation on 
'Change, of princely incomes. They talk glibly of 
"our firm," its prospects, its trade, its profits, and deem 
themselves fortunate in their positions. They are 
learned in their vocation, and business is the spirit of 
their being. 

Occasionally you observe among them an older and 
a wiser head. He is alert, but listens and looks, and 
smiles half sadly, half satirically. He once had ambi- 
tious expectations ; fed himself on the sweet fruit of 
his own imagining, and wrought at the shadows until 
they seemed substance. His ambition was filled ; his 
expectations deceived him. 

At five and fifty he is a clerk still, with a large 
family, and $1,200 a year. A perpetual struggle his 
life has been, with little compensation in it. He has 
been told by clergymen, and journalists, and authors, 
since he could understand English, that honest in- 
dustry is always ultimately rewarded. His reward is 
two sick children, an invalid wife and debts that 
torture him because he cannot discharge them. He 
has found that integrity brings curses more than 



The Ferries. 105 

blessings. He might have been wealthy but for devo- 
tion to principle. Successful merchants deem him a 
simpleton. He does not share their opinion; but he 
knows he is wretched. 

When the expectant underlings have been trans- 
ferred to the Babylon which is now rattling, and 
smoking, and steaming, and roaring, their superiors 
come upon the scene. They are rather grave, but 
they have a self-satisfied air, like men who have 
striven and won. They are middle - aged, mostly. 
They have incipient crow's-feet about their eyes, wrin- 
kles at the corners of their mouth, flecks of gray n ess 
in their hair. They are confidential clerks, with sala- 
ries of five or six, perhaps ten thousand a year, in the 
great houses in Church street or West Broadway, or 
special partners or leading salesmen, with a percentage 
on profits. They are in comfortable circumstances. 
They have incomes independent of their positions. 
They can afford to think of others, and grinding pov- 
erty does not comj^el them to be mean. Externals 
appear well to them. They feel the sunshine, even if 
the heavens be overcast, and the air is sweet, though 
it comes from New-York. 

The masters rarely flash upon the sphere before 11 
or 12; but they tread almost on the heels of those 
only a little less than themselves. They are truly of 
the fortunate in the worldly sense. They are the 
senior members of the prosperous firms ; the men who 
have much to get and little to do ; who walk or ride 
over to their counting-room; superintend and give 
council for an hour or two; lunch at Delmonico's, 
and over a bottle of Chambertin, or Cot^ d'Or, discuss 
with their wealthy rivals the effect of the trade of 



106 The Great Metropolis. 

Japan upon the United- States. They should be con- 
tented and satisj&ed, at least in money matters. But 
they are not. They are more anxious to increase 
their fortune, though their present income is far be- 
yond their largest expenditures, than they were when 
it was below a hundred thousand. They have physi- 
cal ailments and domestic infelicities which they would 
get rid of at the price of all their 5.20s. When the 
gout twinges, and their brain reels with presaging 
apoplexy, they wonder why their riches can't preserve 
them from such attacks, and fancy they would surren- 
der fortune for youth and health. But they would 
not. The loss of what they would never need would 
drive them half mad ; for the masters are the slaves of 
Mammon and servants of self-interest. 

If they poured out their secret sorrows, perhaps we 
would not exchange our poverty for their great gains. 
But we all have secret sorrows, and they are easier to 
bear with plethoric purses than empty ones; for, say 
what we may, the heart aches less on a satin sofa than on 
a pallet of straw. And Araminta's arms are fairer when 
luxuriously indolent and spanned with diamonds than 
when bared to the drudgery of the kitchen. And Amy's 
kisses sweeter from her poetry-pronouncing lips than 
if they were drawn down habitually from lowness of 
spirit and abject circumstance. 

David Ducat, Sr., president of the Sapphire bank, 
and founder of the great importing house of Ducat, 
Doubloon & Co., is sorely distressed because David, Jr., 
is drinking himself to death, and his dearest daughter 
Julia icill meet that profligate verse-maker clandes- 
tinely. But he need not be inconsolable. He has a 
family lot in Greenwood, and, if harm come to Julia, 



The Ferries. 107 

the scamp will many her, for she is one of only three 
children. On the whole, things might be worse ; and 
the credit of the house never stood better. 

One tribe goes early to the ferries from this side, and 
lingers until the solid men have descended to the 
piers — the tribe of newsboys. They rush frantically 
down to the ferry-houses before the first arrow of light 
is shot across the sky, and fill the fresh morning with 
clamor about the Times^ Tribune^ Herald^ World and 
Sun. 

The first comers generally want the ^^Staafs Zeitung^'' 
or '■'■ Journar^ or " 7>emoA:ra^," though a number buy 
the Sun' some the Herald and World. The second- 
class have no eye for any other paper than the Sun., 
laud the quartos as the urchins may. But when the 
original sun flames up the east, and burns down upon 
the waters, the neglected large dailies grow into favor. 
Even the Times and Tribune., which were dull stock at 
first, find ready purchasers from well-dressed and 
thoughtful-looking men. One division of the news- 
boys keeps guard upon the boats, permitting no one 
to pass without yelling in his ears the news of the 
morning. Other divisions d,eploy as skirmishers, and 
dash through Brooklyn, Jersey-City, Hoboken, Asto- 
ria, Ravenswood, East New- York; board the morning 
trains; hurry into every nook and corner and lonely 
street of the surrounding towns and villages, and sell 
out before the leisurely part of the Metropolis has stir- 
red in its bed. 

The refluent wave rises about 3 P. M,, and it washes 
and surges for four or five hours far more than the 
advancing swell of the morning. One would suppose, 
if he took his stand at the different ferry -houses, that 



108 The Great Metropolis. 

New- York was emptying itself before a devastating 
plague. Down Broadway to Wall and Fulton, to 
Whitehall and Courtlandt streets, sweeps the mob of 
home-seekers, reckless of vehicles, careless of each 
other, driven by one idea — that of reaching their des- 
tination in the shortest possible time. 

In that rush all classes are mingled, lawyers and la- 
dies, physicians and clergymen, merchants and beg- 
gars, pickpockets and philanthropists, authors and prize- 
fighters, bar -keepers and artists, courtesans and prudes, 
zealots and atheists, side by side, intertwisted, inter- 
locked, brushing each other's garments, breathing each 
other's breaths. The ferries are black with people, 
and ultra professional reporters in the throng think 
what a magnificent sensation they might write out if 
the boats would blow up or sink suddenly. 

Long before the vessel touches the pier boys and 
men measure the distance with their eyes, and leap 
off at serious risk to themselves. When the chain is 
thrown down half the masculine passengers are out of 
sight, and no one is hurt. We Americans are an agile 
and carefully calculating people, after all. If any 
other nation were as reckless as we, it would have dis- 
tressing accidents by the dozen every day in the year. 
We seem to know what we can do, and do it. We 
are born to narrow escapes, but we rarely fail. 

In the evening we have from over the river the 
amusement-goers, and later, their return; and the 
boats are full until 11 or 12 o'clock. At the latter hour 
the ferries stop generally, though, as I have said, the 
Fulton, Courtlandt and Barclay street boats run at 
stated intervals all night. The passengers are few 
after the nocturnal noon, and at the weird hours that 



The Ferries. 



109 



precede the dawn the few who cross the rivers regard 
each other with suspicion. Journalists imagine ex- 
hausted printers from the same office to be highwaymen ; 
and printers fancy the man whoso "copy" they have 
set a thousand times a moon-struck fellow, waiting for 
a favorable moment to leap overboard. 

The ferries furnish good studies of human nature. 
He who likes to read character, and trace personal his- 
tory from outlines of suggestion may find occupation 
and interest on the rivers and the bay at all hours and 
all seasons. Every kind of people will sit before his 
mental pallet, and unconsciously resign themselves to 
liis rambling brush. 








FORT LAFAYETTE.— BUKNED DEC. 1868. 



CHAPTER XI. 
GREENWOOD, i 

Greenwood is one of the first places strangers visit. 
New Yorkers are more indifferent about the famous 
cemetery, because, perhaps, they know they are certain 
to go there soon or late. They have reason to be 
proud of it, however ; for it deserves its reputation, 
and is a charming place in which to sleep eternity 
away. 

It is both poetic and philosophic to make pleasant 
the last resting-place ; to rob death of its thousand 
nameless terrors and give it the appearance of an 
unbroken calm of the emancipated spirit, — the taking 
home to the bosom of Nature and her silent sympathy 
the souls that have been o'er wearied in the struggle 
with life. 

Graveyards may be sad ; but there is a sweetness in 
their sadness, and the deep suggestions of infinite rest, 
which the lightest heart, in the midst of its highest 
happiness, forever craves. There is balm for many 
wounds in the strolling among low mounds, and the 
listening to the airy voices that are ever whispering 
of peace. 

« A gay Gaul who made a visit to New York some 
years ago, thought it singular enough that the hack- 
man he asked to drive to the pleasantest places in the 
vicinity should carry him to what he called the Pere 



Greenwood. Ill 

la Chaise of America. " Strange people, these Amer- 
icans," he reflected; "they think death delightful." 

The hackman's nature was deeper than the French- 
man's. The' one was a worldling, the other a philoso- 
pher, and a man of taste as well ; for Greenwood is, 
excepting the Park, the pleasantest place in the neigh- 
borhood of the Metropolis. 

Just about a quarter of a century ago. Greenwood, 
containing over 500 acres of beautiful, rolling and va- 
ried land, was opened for burial purposes ; and since 
then it has been steadily increasing in attractiveness 
and picturesqueness of effect. During that period, 
nearly 140,000 persons have been interred there, and 
many of the finest specimens of art which the country 
can show, have been erected as monuments to the 
memory of the dead. Vanity, the strongest passion 
of humanity, not only lives beyond, but rears itself in 
fantastic marble above, the tomb. Many of the mon- 
uments have cost from $10,000 to $100,000; and 
marble and truth have been tortured to transform the 
vices of the living into the virtues of the dead. 

A ramble or a ride throuo;h Greenwood is delijrht- 
ful, especially in Spring, when the earth has put on its 
fresh greenness, and the flowers are in their first blos- 
soming, or late in Autumn, when vegetation is dying 
in prismatic beauty, and the brown and crimson leaves 
are floating off to the calling of the sea. Its walks 
and drives, and lakes and groves, with the distant 
view of the Island City, the beautiful Bay, and the 
ocean stretching away into cloud and shy, form a pan- 
orama hardly equaled on the Continent. 

No wonder it is a popular place of resort. No one 
sensible to beauty or the charms of Nature, can fail to 



112 The Great Metropolis. 

experience a joy of vision as his eye sweeps for miles 
around, over land and river, over sound and sea; 
catches the far-off spires, the highlands of Staten 
Island, the Palisades of the Hudson, the forests of 
masts among which Manhattan is buried, and the count- 
less water-craft steaming and sailing in every direction 
from the vast centre of commerce to every port and 
clime beneath the sun. 

No other cemetery at home or abroad — and Europe 
boasts much of some of hers — has such advantages of 
position, such variety of prospect, such richness of 
ocular effect. 

I am not surprised so many sentimentalists go to 
Greenwood to idealize Love, and Life, and Death, and 
seek the realization of all poetry in their own hearts. 
I rarely visit the place that I do not meet the loving 
and the loved wandering pensively and sympathetically 
through the pleasant walks, or sitting magnetically 
together, discoursing in low voices of the mystic 
thing which makes the World go round. The quiet- 
ness and pensiveness of the place suggest the fiercely^ 
tender passion, which is always sad, and render the 
heart dangerously susceptible to its mysterious prompt- 
ings. 

If you seek, good reader, the love of a fine woman, 
who has thus far been unwon, invite her to Greenwood, 
and, in the presence of the dead, and while the hand 
of Autumn is shaking down the variegated leaves, tell 
her you are wretched ; that only through the light of 
her eyes comes hope ; that you have longed for years 
to be at rest in the grave, but that love for her has 
given you new life ; that the World cannot be hollow 
which contains her — with other kindred sentimental- 



Greenwood. 113 

isms— and, trust me, you will find her hand stealing to 
yours, the tears to her eyes, and her head to your 
heart. 

That will open the door to her hard bosom, and yor 
can enter it unchallenged, and sit thereafter, long as 
you please, upon the throne of her self-love, in the high 
court of her self-admiration. 

" Carry not your melancholy and your wooing too 
far," says a cynic at my elbow. "I knew a persever- 
ing gentleman who did so, and the result was, his 
charmer became his wife, and charmed no more." 

If Wall street owned Greenwood, it would daily 
quote graves in demand, funerals active and death 
easy. It rarely happens the cemetery is without a 
funeral cortege, and at least a score of laborers are ever 
opening graves. 

The tears of affliction are always falling ; the sob of 
bereavement is always heard ; the wail of stricken 
hearts is always rising there. And yet, nowhere does 
the sunlight fall more softly; the birds sing more 
sweetly ; the flowers smell more fragrantly. They are 
wiser than we purblind mortals : they see beyond, and 
know the whole. 

From 15 to 20 interments are daily made in Green- 
wood ; and already a number nearly equaling the en- 
tire population of some of our largest cities lies under 
the soil, sacred forevermore in at least 1,000,000 mourn- 
ers' eyes, — eyes which may be dry to-day, but will be 
wet again to-morrow. 

A dark train is always passing over those green un- 
dulations; and the laughing sight-seers are hushed 
when, at the sudden turn of the walk, they come upon, 
weeping friends about a new-dug grave. 



114 The Great Metropolis. 

Many a pair of the wandering sentimentalists I have 
named have forgotten for the moment their fancied 
woe while they heard the earth fall hollowly upon the 
coffin-lid which shuts out forever and forever the face 
that was dearest in all the World. 

How use doth breed a habit in a man ! The gate- 
keepers, grave-diggers, undertakers, hearse-drivers, see 
in the agony of the bereaved only a phase of nature, 
as they do the clouds in the sky, or withering leaves 
on trees. They have had their own woes, and will 
have them again, and cannot afford to sympathize with 
those external to themselves ; for the sympathetic are 
ever bearing burthens that do not belong to them. 
The great gates which seem to say, "Abandon love, 
all ye who enter here," are not less sympathetic than 
their keepers ; and both look stonily upon the funeral 
pageants as they pass, and have no heart to answer to 
that low, stifled wail which is the note of despair. 

Observe the funerals. They are many and different ; 
some pompous and pretentious ; some plain and unas- 
suming, with more freightage of grief than the loftier 
ones; for prosperity hardens, and splendor, which 
hides, also lessens pain. 

This is an ambitious cortege. The coffin is rosewood 
and mounted with silver, for the dead man was very 
rich and little loved. The weeds of his widow and 
nearest relatives are very deep and costly; and those 
kinsfolk look as if they deemed it their duty to mourn, 
which, like many other duties, is most difficult to dis- 
charge. 

Are they thinking of what they have lost ; of a 
gentle smile forever withdrawn; of a loving heart for- 
ever still ? They are thinking less of what has gone 



Greenwood. 115 

than what has been left, — of bequests and legacies, of 
pleasures they will purchase and vanities they will 
gratify. In their secret hearts, they rejoice that he is 
dead. His death was the kindest thing he ever did 
for them; and, were he conscious once more, they 
would thank him for quitting a life he was too selfish 
to make useful and too sordid to beautify. 

Another comes. The deceased was an old man ; 
but the widow is young, and fair, and fashionable, for 
she loved her husband not. She tried long and hard ; 
but who can compel the heart? And, when esteem 
was half mistaken for affection, the one great love 
which woman never feels but once, often as it may be 
repeated, and counterfeited, swept like a consuming 
fire through every fibre of her long-starving soul. 
Prudence, duty, loyalty, were reduced to ashes by the 
intense flame, and blown to every wind by the gusts 
of passion. And yet it burned on, burned when the 
lamp of the other's life went out; burns when he is 
lowered into the earth. Conscience pricks; remorse 
stings; but, looking up, the widow meets the tender 
eye of the living and loving man for whom all this de- 
ception and perfidy have been, and the whole Universe 
has nothing for her but that one tender gaze. 

Few carriages make up this train, and few mourners 
are in them. But the tears they shed are genuine, 
and the grief they show comes from their inmost souls. 
Wife and mother was she to the fullest ; and, when she 
died, a place was made vacant that cannot be supplied. 
Years hence, he and his children will entwine her dear 
name with their prayers, and Heaven will seem near 
when her spirit is invoked. 

In that coffin lies a girl, of eighteen, so young in 



116 The Great Metropolis. 

years, so old in sin; and her funeral is the contribution 
of her riches in shame. How old the story, but as sad 
this hour as when the first woman fell ! No natural 
protectors; with beauty that tempted and passion that 
deceived, it was as natural she should err as the o'er- 
ripe fruit should drop or the breezes blow. After two 
years of wantonness, she still could love, and deserted 
by a common creature whom the poor courtesan had 
made a god in the profane temple of her heart, she 
lifted her hand against her life, and slew it. 

What made Romeo and Juliet immortal, and set 
Werther to the music of his kind will not hallow a 
nameless grave. Yet love is love, throbbing below 
the coronet or trembling in pariah's garb; and the 
Eternal Love will always recognize it, and bless it for 
its being, and see that no part of it shall ever perish. 

In that little group mourns one who has no social 
privilege to mourn, whose love would be reckoned 
sin (as if to love could ever be a sin) in books of 
creed and canons of the Church. But he loved her 
better than a brother, a father or husband, and yet 
was none of those. It is pity it is so; that circum- 
stance, and destiny will not flow in the channels of in- 
clination, or bubble up in the springs of sympathy. 

Does the next, or any succeeding sphere set right 
the wrongs and cross-purposes of this? Ask the ocean 
of its tides, and the stars of their occupants ; but they 
will not answer any more than that question can be 
answered. Yet it is good to believe all is for the best ; 
for belief is consolation, and consolation strength. 

A bachelor friend, who has seen a good deal of the 
World, and of that peculiar portion known as women, 



Greenwood. 117 

once told me one of his sentimental experiences while 
we were lounging in Greenwood. 

"Five years ago about this time," he said, " 1 was 
sitting near this spot with a very pretty and romantic 
girl, who had long declared she loved me, and who, 
though blessed with a wealthy father, would have 
married me and my poverty, and defied all her rela- 
tives, if I had permitted her to make such a sacrifice. 

" I was quite fond of her, as men of sensibility and 
gallantry usually are of women who love them devo- 
tedly, and the fact that I could not make her my wife 
rendered our relation more poetic than it would have 
been had we been engaged. She was rather delicate, 
and her friends feared she had a pulmonary affection. 
She thought she would not live long, and the day we 
sat together here she looked pale, and more lovely 
than ever. The Autumn leaves were falling round us, 
and with her head leaning on my breast, she said, with 
tears in her eyes : ' I feel, darling, that I am dying. I 
believe that the next year's leaves will strew my grave. 
But I shall rest sweetly if I can dream in Heaven that 
you still love me.' 

"My heart was touched as it never was before," my 
friend added. "I fancied at that moment that I loved 
her devotedly. I was tempted to say, ' Be mine, dar- 
ling, before the World. If we love each other, we 
shall have wealth enough, and contentment that for- 
tune cannot buy.' But I remembered the day would 
come when neither of us would feel so ; that no pas- 
sion, however ardent, can survive meager breakfasts, 
and cold potatoes at dinner. So I kissed her tenderly ; 
dried the dew of her tears on the rose leaves of my 
lips (I was sentimental then); and told her she would 



118 The Great Metropolis. 

be some man's lovely wife when I was at supper after 
Polonius's fashion. 

"She looked a sad rebuke at this, and shed more 
tears, which I kissed away again, and we wandered 
into less lugubrious themes. 

""We retained our sentimental attachment until the 
War broke out. I went to the field, and after a few 
letters our correspondence ended. 

"When the struggle was over, I came home, and 
one of the first carriages I noticed in the Park contain- 
ed my quondam inamorata, a middle-aged man, rather 
vulgar, though very prosperous -looking, and two 
bouncing children in charge of a French-Irish bonne-. 

" One glance told the whole story. I perceived that 
the sentimental drama had ended as a comedy, with 
marriage; and I laughed, as I had often done before 
under similar circumstances, at the prose denouement 
of the rose-colored episode. I learned a few days after 
that my sweet Saloma had accepted a husband, of her 
parents' election, who had made a fortune by a Gov- 
ernment contract, and who did not know whether 
Dante was a Dane or a Dutchman, and certainly did 
not care. 

"I was glad she had done so well, and gladder I had 
not been unwise enough to make her matrimonially 
miserable. I drank a glass of wine at dinner every 
day for a week to her connubial happiness — it was 
barely necessary to toast her health then — and, meet- 
ing her at the opera a fortnight after, she remembered 
my face, but had forgotten my name — the name of the 
man she had vowed she loved better than her own soul, 
and who was all the World to her, and something 
more. 



Greenwood. 119 

" Women are fine rhetoricians," remarked my friend, 
" but I think they place a small estimate upon the 
World and their own souls." 

Another story about the cemetery. A merchant of 
wealth lost his wife, of whom he had seemed to be very 
fond, and who had borne him several children. He 
followed her cofiin to the grave in tears, and showed 
more violent grief than it is usual for men, even in the 
greatest affliction. His friends pitied him, and de- 
clared him a model of domestic devotion ; some even 
doubting if he would long survive the partner of his 
bosom. Their surprise and indignation may be im- 
agined when he married the governess of his children, 
the third day after the funeral. 

Those who claimed to know, said he proposed to 
her on the way home — they rode together in the same 
carriage — and that she, after a fit of weeping and a 
tumultuous protest against the haste and indelicacy of 
the proceeding, under the circumstances, accepted 
him, and had a clear understanding about the amount 
of the settlement he would make upon her. 

Many members of his set cut him directly, and his 
premature marriage excited so much feeling in his 
circle that he found it convenient to go abroad and 
stay for two years. When he returned, his dead wife's 
friends had grown indifferent to, or forgotten her 
wrongs, and received the second wife with welcome, as 
if nothing had occurred to disturb the old social rela- 
tions. 

The merchant understood human nature. Go away 
for two years, and people will forget almost anything, 
their dearest friends not excepted. 

When you read all the inscriptions and epitaphs, 



120 The Great Metropolis. 

believe them true, and wonder not how it happens 
that the grave is the great saint-maker. You may 
think, when the predicted resurrection comes, that 
most of the risen, on reading their tombstones, will be 
convinced they were put into the wrong graves. But 
do not say so, lest you be deemed a cynic, or a truth- 
speaker, which is much the same. 

Console yourself with the reflection that whatever 
life you lead, your virtues will blossom in the dust ; 
that men who carve in marble are privileged to lie ; 
and that, being fairly out of everybody's way, and 
incapable of coming back, your worst enemies will 
hardly take the pains to remember they hated you. 

But as for those who loved me ? ask you. Never 
mind them. Sir Egotist, and they will not disturb 
themselves about you. Love has often done men 
more harm than good in this World ; but in the tomb 
it will do you neither one nor the other ; for the grave- 
grass heals the deepest wounds that love has ever 
made. 



CHAPTER Xn. 
THE PARKS. 

If New- York has its festering tenement-liouses, it 
has also its wholesome parks, and these are, in some 
sort, its redemption. No city in the Union has so 
many breathing-places, and the Metropolis, in spite of 
its crowded population, its municipal mismanagement, 
its poverty, its vice and its squalor, is probably one of 
the healthiest great centres of civilization in the World. 

It is not a little remarkable, in a City whore every 
square inch of ground is prized as gold, that so much 
real estate in the most valuable part of the island 
should have been appropriated to the public use. We 
owe much to the early moulders of Manliattan for 
their liberality, and much to the good sense and judg- 
ment of those who first suggested the purchase of the 
Central Park. 

Altogether, we have as many as twenty squares or 
parks ; but a number of these are private, and others 
are being converted to business uses, which is not 
greatly to be regretted, since we have the Central, in- 
cluding and overshadowing all. The best-known, ex- 
clusive of the Central, are the City Hall, Union, Madi- 
son, Stuyvesant, Washington, Tompkins, Gramercy 
and Manhattan. 

The time-honored, once famous plaza, the Battery, has 



122 The Great Metropolis, 

long beeu employed as an emigrant depot ; St. Jolin'a 
is now used as a station by the Hudson River railway ; 
Tompkins' square has been allowed to run to waste ; 
Grammercy has become private property, and is kept 
carefully locked up the greater part of the time. 

City Hall, Washington, Union, and Madison are really 
the only public grounds, and they have been so much, 
neglected that they have lost most of their attractions. 
Since they have been placed in charge of the Central 
Park commissioners, however, it is believed they will 
soon be made to resume something of their old fresh- 
ness and beauty. 

The down-town enclosures have of late years, espe- 
cially since the opening of the Central, been given up 
to disreputable loungers, children and nurses — those 
of our citizens who needed recreation and fresh air 
going to the Park to find them. The smaller open 
spaces add to the pleasantness and picturcsqueness of 
the Metropolis; but they are more for ornament than 
for use, and so completely swallowed up by the Fifty- 
ninth street rus in urhe as to be undeserving of special 
mention. 

Many of New- York's pretensions are absurd, as 
every sensible person knows ; but it has a right to 
boast of the Central Park, (and it does, too,) for it is 
indeed an honor and a glory. It is hardly surpassed 
by any in the old world, and will in time surpass the 
celebrated Hyde Park of London and the Bois de Bou- 
logne of Paris. Every year adds to its attractiveness, 
and Avhen its groves have grown and its countless pro- 
jected improvements been completed, it will well de- 
serve the name delightful. 

With nearly a thousand acres of elaborately laid out 



The Parks. 123 

grounds, with its cliarming walks and drives, its lakes 
and grottoes, its caves and casino, its mall and bridges, 
its rocks and rustic arbors, it would be a temptation 
and a pleasure to any one, but most of all to the busy 
million who inhabit this busy island, and who are shut 
away from fresh breezes and green fields by the pres- 
ence of poverty or the demands of interest. 

The great advantage of the Park is, that it is open 
to all, and that the poor enjoy it more than the rich, 
who can go where they like, and purchase what the 
Central gives gratis. 

No sight is more pleasant there than the laborer or 
mechanic, on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, with his 
wife and children, luxuriating in the mere absence of 
toil, and drinking in the breezes from the sea which 
cannot find their way into the close tenement quarters 
he calls his home. He gains new health, new hope, 
new heart there, and dares to believe, while Nature is 
whispering to him on every side, that he may yet 
emancipate himself and those he loves from the mean- 
ness and hardness that environ him. His good reso- 
lutions are strengthened there ; and Avho shall say that 
njen who have dissipated their earnings, and robbed 
those dependent on them of such comforts as were 
needed, have not, under the clear canopy of the sky, 
away from dust, and tumult, and distraction, felt the 
better and truer life, and turned to it with earnestness 
and laudable ambition ? No doubt the Paik does moral 
as well as physical good ; for there is closer connection 
between what is known as sense and soul than philo- 
sophers have discovered, or theologians have dared to 
believe. 

The Park is noticeable in one respect: It is the only 
well-governed part of the entire island. The corrup- 



124 The Great Metropolis. 

tion, the political trading, and the malfeasance in of 
fice that characterize the "authorities" of New- York, 
seem kept out of that particular territory by honest 
cherubim, imported from some other locality, who 
guard the gates with unseen swords. Of the commis- 
sioners, wonderful to relate, no one complains. They 
have never been accused of, much less discovered in, 
appropriating the public funds, or defrauding the mu- 
nicipal treasury in any way. Yet they are mortal and 
live in New- York. So the age of miracles is not over, 
and the millenium may yet be hoped for. 

On pleasant afternoons the Park presents a brilliant 
appearance, and reveals not only the worth and wealth, 
but the pretension and parvenuism of this aristocratic- 
democratic city. One would hardly believe he was in 
a republican country to see the escutcheoned panels of 
the carriages, the liveried coachmen, and the supercili- 
ous air of the occupants of the vehicles, as they go 
pompously and flaringly by. Some of these persons 
are so conspicuously emblazoned and tawdrily attired 
that one may well doubt if meanness and vulgarity do 
not lie behind their elaborate tinseling. And, if he 
inquire, he will discover his doubts are confirmed. H^ 
will learn that the nouveaux riches^ the people who 
are from not only humble, but vulgar origin, who lack 
culture and generosity of character, are most anxious 
to hide theit past with purple, and veneer their lacking 
with pretense. 

Those two carriages following one after another are 
singularly alike, and so are the occupants. The women 
are fleshy, gross, and very showily dressed. They 
imagine they resemble duchesses, (some of the most 
vulgar-appearing ladies in Europe are elderly title- 
bearers ;) but they look more like the devil, as he is 



The Parks. 125 

popularly supposed to look, witli unrefinement oozing 
out of their every pore, and good breeding blushing 
behind their backs. 

One carriage contains the wife and sister of a con- 
tractor who made a fortune during the war by defraud- 
ing the government, and who ten^ years ago played 
" friendly games" with marked cards. They now envy 
the wind that comes between them and their new no- 
bility, and believe they are "genteel" because they are 
rich. 

The other carriage bears a brace of unfortunates 
whose mode of livelihood is no mystery in Mercer 
street, and whose pigment cannot hide the secret of 
their shame. The newly rich women imagine those 
fallen sisters leaders of fashion, and privately long for 
an introduction and an invitation to what must be very 
exclusive receptions. If told of their mistake, how in- 
dignant they would be, and how ungrammatically they 
would deny that they supposed " those horrid crea- 
tures" to be ladies. 

Here comes a plain carriage, with a plainly dressed 
pair. Neither the man nor woman is handsome, if 
regularity of features mean that ; but their faces are 
intellectual and spiritual, and their eyes seem to mirror 
truth, which is beauty as well. Their coachman has 
no livery. They wear no diamonds. They are free 
from all appearance of affectation. They are of the 
kind which parvenuism would consider nobodies at 
first sight, — persons who wanted to be something and 
could not succeed. 

Deeply deluded they who judge so. That man and 
woman are husband and wife in the true sense. 
Though wealthy and moving in the very best circles 
of society, they wedded for love, and lost not caste by 



126 The Great Metropolis. 

it, for they themselves make the genuine caste. If 
there be such a thing as gentle blood in this confused 
democracy of ours, they have it. But they do not 
talk of it. They do not tell you, unless by accident, 
who their grandfather and great-grandfather were; 
for they know that true refinement and breeding need 
no trumpets. 

As an offset to that contented and single couple is 
another, who are their friends, and drive by them in a 
turn-out putting theirs to shame. The second couple 
are fond of display, but are educated, good-hearted, , 
highminded. They are far from satisfied, however. 
The childless wife loved a poor man, whom she could 
not therefore wed ; and so, with characteristic perver- 
sity, wedded a man she could not love. 

She has paid the penalty, as all do who violate na- 
ture, which is, if rightly understood, the only sin. 
Year after year she represses every loving impulse of 
her heart, and starves her tender soul in the midst of 
material plenty. 

Her partner rather than her husband, has an ample 
fortune, but a broken constitution and feeble health. 
There is no enjoyment for him. He knows the woman 
who sits opposite with vacant eyes has no sympathy 
with him. He has sought pleasure in society, in travel, 
in the excitements of business ; but it came not. The 
old pain, the feeling of exhaustion, is with him always ; 
and he waits with such patience as he can command 
for the end. " Oh, yes, that will be a relief," he thinks, 
"for the dead do not suffer and to be comfortably 
dead is a blessing after all." 

The hard-working mechanic that looks up at the pale 
face, and sees the handsome carriage, envies him who 



The Parks. 127 

lias such abundant wealth. And the man of means 
looks down at the toiler with the ruddy flush in his 
face, and the stalwart form, and envies what he him- 
self has lost. 

Ever thus with life. We envy the seeming, igno- 
rant of the actual. We murmur at our own lot, and 
yet would shrink from exchanging destinies with those 
standing apparently above us, and wrapped in self- 
content. 

To him who pines for pecuniary success, who has 
been rudely buffeted by fortune, there is, if he be 
generous, satisfaction in knowing while he stands or 
walks in the Park, that there are so many more blessed 
than he. He can count by the hour the line of car- 
riages that dash by him, radiant with smiles of the in- 
mates and emitting odors of prosperity ; and rejoice 
that they have gained what he has missed. If he be 
ungenerous, he can think of the skeletons in perfumed 
closets at home ; of the one desire longed for above 
all others, and never to be gratified ; of the vacuity of 
the heart that will not be filled, put into it what chink- 
ing coin we may ; of the absence of the sympathy we 
all need, since gold will not buy nor adversity destroy 
it ; of the sweet hope of to-morrow, without which life 
is only breathing beneath a pall. 

Let him think of those things, surely sad enough, 
and consolation will be born of thought, — a little con- 
solation, which will not be lost, but which will be. suc- 
ceeded by a broader feeling. A higher philosophy 
will come, that each human creature must work out 
his own destiny as best he may, and with such forces 
as are his ; that Envy is more than useless ; that Duty 
as we conceive it, alone is precious ; and that, within 



128 



The Great Metropolis. 



less tlian a century, nothing in the present can yield 
us pleasure or give us pain. 

The Park has its lessons; and, though envy may be 
the first feeling of him who goes there poor and un- 
successful, a certain content will come after he lingers 
and reflects on what passes before him. He will see 
due time that all that glitters is not gold ; that 



m 



while health and self-respect remain he has no reason 
to complain of fortune or despair of the future. 




MASS MEETING, UNION SQUARE. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
THE BOWERY. 

The Bowery is one of tlie most peculiar and striking 
quarters of the Metropolis. It is a city in itself; and 
a walk from Chatham square to Seventh street reveals 
a variety of life second only to Broadway itself It is 
the Cheapside of New- York ; the place of the People ; 
the resort of mechanics and the laboring classes ; the 
home and the haunt of a great social democracy. 

Within a single block of Broadway, it is sufiiciently 
unlike that great thoroughfare to be in another State 
or section of the country. The buildings are different ; 
the people are different ; the atmosphere, the manners, 
the customs are different. The few blocks separate it 
from Broadway as a Chinese wall; and opposing Tar- 
tary rages but disturbs not, within reach of the human 
voice. 

When one turns off from Broadway at Park Row, 
struggles through Chatham street, and toils into the 
Bowery, he cannot be so absorbed as not to be una- 
ware of the change. Every place and step remind 
him of his wanderings. 

The human sea on which he floats is more noisy 
and tumultuous. The waters are less clear. More 
drift and sea-weed are on the surface. The dash of the 
waves is more irregular; their murmur hoarser ; their 
swell more unbroken. 
9 



130 The Great Metropolis. 

The Bowery is more cosmopolitan than Broadway 
even. It contains more types of persons; more na- 
tionalities; a greater variety, though less contrast, of 

characters. 

The vast Globe seems to have emptied itself into 
that broad curve, lined with buildings of every kind, 
new and old, marble and brick, high and low, stone 
and wood. 

Germans are so numerous there, one might fancy 
himself in Frankfort or Hamburg. Irish so abound 
that Cork and Dublin appear to have come over in the 
vast ships lying at the not distant piers. Itahans prat- 
tle, in Ariosto's language, of the beauty of bananas and 
the importance of pennies. Frenchmen jabber ; Span- 
iards look grave; Chinamen stand sad and silent; col- 
ored men stare vacantly, or laugh unctiously, in that 
singular hub-bub of humanity. 

Order, and form, and caste, and deference, shaken 
and confused in Broadway, are broken into fragments 
in the Bowery, and trampled under foot. 

" Who-are you? " I am as good as anybody ;" " The 
devil take you;" "We are for ourselves; Look out 
for your own," are written in every passing face, and 
flaunting sign, and tawdry advertisement this side of 
Cooper Institute and Tompkins market. 

No respect for persons in the surging Bowery. You 
may be the President, or a Major-General, or be Gov- 
ernor, or be Mayor, and you will be jostled and crowded 
off the sidewalk just the same as if you drew beer at 
the Atlantic Garden, or played supernumerary at the 

Stadt theatre. 

Broadway has some idea of what is kuown as behav- 
ior. Perhaps the Bowery has too. But it does not 



The Bowery. 13 j 

carry the idea into practice. It treads on your heels 
turns molasses, or milk, or liquor over your clothes 
tears your garments, or whirls you into the gutter 
yet never asks your pardon, or explains in the least. 

If you want manners, you should not be there. You 
must submit to the customs of the quarter, or fight if 
you are aggrieved. In America, fighting is always a 
proposal to be received, and is generally welcome to 
some one within sound of your challenge. 

When the denizens of Broadway straggle into the 
Bowery, they are easily recognized as Greeks in Con- 
stantmople. They are evidently not at home. Elbowed 
and run against, they look up in surprise, and seem to 
expect some kind of apology. If they murmur, an 
oath is thrown back at them, or a withering contempt 
for their conventionahsm and consequence. 

"If you disapprove of our ways," says the Bowery, 
with defiant chin and arms akimbo, "go over to Broad- 
way. They make you pay for manners there. Here 
you can have plainness and naturalness for nothing 
We'll drink or fight with you. But we won't feirrn or 
flatter. It isn't our style." 

The Bowery is practical as well as blunt. It is a 
great retail mart. Every block is filled with trades- 
men, and showmen, and tricksters. It has its own 
theatres, and hotels, and literature, and business, and 
pleasures. 

Its object is not to sell to the public what the public 
wants, but what it does not want. Hence unfortunate 
dealers, and aggressive clerks, and flaming advertise- 
ments and posters, that assure you in many ways you 
are a fool if you neglect the golden opportunity for the 
first and last time presented. 



132 The Great Metropolis. 

To believe a tithe of what huge cards, and oppress- 
ive signs declare is to feel your fortune secured, and 
the kindest gods struggling to crown you with their 
choicest blessings. 

You can buy anything in the Bowery — ^buy it cheap, 
and find it very dear. Brass watches, warranted to be 
gold; frail goods, made strong by oaths; spurious jew- 
elry, shining with affidavits; old clothes, scoured to 
brightness with much care and more promises, — all 
these are to be had there in profusion, and confusion 
withal. 

In what ruin all Bowery dealers are determined to 
involve themselves 1 What sacrifices they are resolved 
to make ! What religious consecration is theirs to the 
pleasure and the benefit of the deeply-adored public ! 
How solicitous are they to secure to the needy com- 
munity bargains at all hazards ! 

Externally, they live only for others. Really, they 
live only upon others. They measure their shrewd- 
ness against the meanness of their customers. They 
practically believe honesty is the worst policy and that 
he who cannot cheat deserves to be cheated. 

The Bowery knows its patrons. What would in- 
sult a Broadway habitue, and drive him off in indigna- 
tion, holds and wins the frequenter of the more demo- 
cratic thoroughfare. 

The Bowery takes the ground that no man or woman 
knows what he or she wants, and that it is the mission 
and the province of the shop-keeper to enlighten such 
ignorance. Desire must be created; articles must be 
uro-ed. Given the customer, the tradesman is a sim- 
pleton who cannot manage the sale. 

I have often wondered, and at last smiled, at the 



The Bowery. I33 

metliod of the Bowery merchant, which is much in this 
fashion. 

Womaii—Ra^ve you got any calico like this (show- 
ing a piece) ? 

^ Tradesman— knj quantity; but you don't want it. 
I'll show you — 

Woma7i — I want something to match. I've 

Tradesman—You're mistaken, madam. You don't 
want such old-fashioned goods as that. Of course you 
don't. No woman does. It's absurd to s'pose so. 
Look at that piece, madam. A regular beauty, and 
cheap as dirt. Sold that yesterday for a dollar. Will 
let you have it for six shillings. Not another such bar- 
gain in New- York. 

Woman — But it isn't like what — 
Tradesman — It's just what you want, my dear 
madam. Why, I can see in your pretty face that it is. 
Suits your style 'xactly. When you put it on, your 
husband will declare you never was so lovely. 
Woman— I haven't got any husband. 
Tradesman— or course you haven't. But you will 
have when you buy this dress. That's what I meant 
See that, now. Why, those colors would catch any 
chap. They're elegant, and so very low, madam. Re- 
member, I said six shillings. They cost five and six. 
pence at the manufactory; can show you the bills. 
You've too much sense and taste to refuse that at the 
money. Don't hesitate. It's your last chance. How 
many yards? Nine? Better take eleven. That's right. 
Boy, bring the yardstick. What kind of trimmins ? 
Perfect beauty made up. You're a lucky woman this 
day. Only six shillins. What a splendid bargain ! 
Scene, a boot-store. Enter a modest-looking me- 



134 The Great Metropolis. 

clianic; made humble by oppression and over-labor 

doubtless. 

Mechanic (with timid air)— Want to look at pair of 
cheap boots, if it isn't too much trouble. 

X)e«?er— Trouble, indeed? We don't intend to be 
troubled. We 'xpect to make people buy who come 
in here. Don't we, Jake (to a rough-featured salesman 
a few yards off)? Yes, sir; we'll fit you, sure."^ 

Mechanic— I just wanted to look to-day. I'll call 

again — 

Dealer— ^o, you won't. Set down. On that stool 
there. Try these. They don't fit? The devil they 
don't? Never was better fit; was there, Jake? Tou 
don't know anything about it. Come, come, old boy. 
Pull out your pocket-book. Let her bleed for $7. 
Can't wear 'em out. You must have 'em. Not money 
enough now? Then leave $3, and drop in agin. 
That'^s right. Name? Robert Murray. ^ All right. 
Keep 'em for you, my man. Good mornin'. 

The descendants of Abraham are abundant in the 
Bowery. They deal in old and new clothes, in watches 
and jewelry, and advance money upon pledges,— the 
three vocations to which Jerusalem ever tends in 
America. They are ever on the alert. They detect a 
good customer as a pointer does a bird. They espe- 
cially covet the men whom the ocean-breezes bear to 
the port of New- York, and the winds of Fate drive 
into the Bowery on stormy days. 

The dark-eyed, dark-visaged fellow behind the glass 
case perceives a sailor rolling towards him, and fastens 
the mariner with his eye and then by the sleeve. 
Shark— Yaui to buy a goot vatch, mein fren' ? 



The Bowery. 135 

Sailor — Dun no, messmate. What ye got to sell ? 
Might buy, p'raps. 

Shark — Ah, dare's te nichest vatch vat ever vas. 
Sheep as you ever saw. Take it for dirty tollars. All 
gold; full sheweled; sholid as a rock. Isn'titapeauty? 
Misther Ishaacs, de broker, round de corner, lends 
feefty toUar on it, but must have de moneys. He veel 
give you more as tat any times. You have a barg'in, 
my fren'. Dat vatch all gold, fuU-sheweled, for dirty 
tollar. 0, 0, how sheep! 

While the sailor looks into the case, the Hebrew 
slips the gold watch into a drawer, and takes out an- 
other, galvanized. The latter he hands to the unsus- 
pecting seaman, who puts his treasure in his pocket, 
and rolls off. He will never know the fraud, for he is 
bent on a cruise through the Fourth ward. He will 
get drunk in a dance-house and be robbed of his val- 
uables, the galvanized chronometer among the rest. 

Perhaps Mr. Simons so reasons, and justifies himself 
accordingly; though Mr. Simons' conscience is not one 
of the things that trouble him often. 

After nightfall, the Bowery is more crowded in the 
vicinity of Canal street than during the day. 

When the tide has run out in lower Broadway, it is 
rising in the Bowery. Then its theatres, and concert 
saloons, and beer-gardens, and cock-pits, and rat dens 
are in full flame. 

Rude bands torture melody ; great lamps glare ; 
sidewalk venders cry "Hot-corn," "Roasted chest- 
nuts," "Nice oranges." Dishonest auctioneers bellow 
from smoky rooms about cheap wares and low prices 
to the crowd that goes sw^aying by the door. The 
famous "Red House" is at the top of its tumultuous 



136 The Great Metropolis. 

trade, with its mountebanks in harlequins' attire, and 
shrill voices wooing the Bowery to buy. 

People of both sexes are streaming- in and out of 
the beer gardens, — often consisting only of a few 
benches and withered boughs, — and the soft music of 
a Lanner waltz or a Rossini overture comes rippling 
out over the turmoil of the street, like the light of the 
moon over a dreadful deed. 

The theatres — German and English — are drawing 
their respective audiences. American newsboys and 
mature mechanics are discussing the dramatic horrors 
they expect to witness, and laughing in anticipation of 
the dreary drolleries of Tony Pastor's opera-house, 
where the mob is tickled and good taste disgusted for 
soiled postal currency in small amounts. 

The Bowery habitues enjoy themselves, somewhat 
coarsely, but thoroughly I suspect. They laugh up- 
roariously at the theatre and in the minstrel-halls and 
concert-saloons, and show their appreciation of the 
frequently indelicate humor by punches in the side of 
their neighbors, or mashing down of well-worn hats 
over perspiring brows. They work hard by day; 
laugh loudly and sleep soundly at night, and let the 
morrow provide for itself with true philosophy. 

They have not much to live for, but they have less 
to leave behind when life is over; and so anxiety for 
what is not concerns them little. They have good ap- 
petite and digestion, and they so fill their hours with 
work that conscience cannot keep them awake; and, 
moreover, they whose toil is constant are not troubled 
Dy that invisible and uncertain monitor. 

Conscience is somewhat of a luxury; and he who 
can keep it has means to silence it when clamorous. 



The Bowery. 137 

The type of the quarter, known as the Bowery boy, 
is nearly extinct. He is seen sometimes, in degenerate 
form and with shorn glory, about the famous theatre, 
and in the cock and rat-pits near Houston and Grand 
streets. But his crimson shirt, and his oiled locks, and 
his peculiar slang, and his freedom of pugnacity, and 
his devotion to the fire-engine are things gone by. 

The places that knew him know him no more. He 
was a provincial product, the growth of a period. The 
increase of the city, the inroad of foreigners, the change 
in customs, and especially the disbanding of the volun- 
teer fire department, swept the Bowery boy from his 
fastenings ; and he is a waif now under many names — 
a thief at the Five Points, a blackleg in Houston street, 
a politician in the Fourth or Sixth ward, a sober-settler 
in the great West, or a broker in Wall street. 

The Bowery boy proper has passed away. But the 
Bowery frets and cheats, and does good and ill, and 
has its wheat and chaff, and is a curious study still. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
FORTUNE-TELLERS. 

The age of superstition lias not passed, nor will it 
ever pass altogether. 

The proof of tins is in the fact that hundreds of 
persons, usually women, are supported here by the 
pretended possession of supernatural powers. Those 
pretenders call themselves spiritual physicians, clair- 
voyants, seers, astrologers, wizards, oracles. But they 
may all be classed under the head of fortune-tellers ; 
for their attraction is in their claim to divine the 
future, and anticipate destiny. 

The fortune-tellers of the Metropolis reside mostly 
in Division street or the Bowery, though they are 
scattered over the town in every direction — advertis- 
ing their location and their special powers in the 
morning issues of the Herald. These revealers of 
fate, as I have said, are generally women, albeit there 
are men who find it profitable to play the charlatan in 
that way — coining a livelihood out of the credulity of 
the million. 

To read the absurd advertisements of the fortune- 
tellers, one might imagine he had slipped back two or 
three centuries in time. One marvels how persons can 
be found capable of believing the transparent and 



Fortune-Tellers. 139 

worn-out nonsense about seventh daughters and sev- 
enth sons, the influence of Mars and Venus, and the 
strange signs in the house o f life — taking the mind 
back to the days of Paracelsus and Caliogstro, before 
Positivism had overthrown the theories of dreamers 
and the delusions of madmen. One cannot understand 
with what interest and curiosity such advertisements 
are read ; how the j^oor and the distressed grasp at 
the smallest straws, hoping for trie far-off shore of 
peace and comfort, even while the death-waters are 
gurgling in their ears. 

Men long for wealth and power; women for love 
and beauty. Facts and reason influence those ; feel- 
ing and imagination these. Hence women can never 
quite divest themselves of superstition. Their hearts 
make them believe in miracles, and they are never 
entirely sure the handsome prince they read of in the 
fairy tale, or the hero they worshiped in the delightful 
romance may not come to them some day, and claim 
them for his own. 

The would-be witch or gipsy who says she can tell 
a woman, if unwedded, who her husband will be — or, 
if a wife, when she will be a widow, and when mar- 
ried again — appeals to her sex as no argument and no 
philosophy can. Consequently the patrons of fortune- 
tellers are naturally feminine, and are to be found in 
all grades of life. — in servant-girls, in seamstresses, in 
shop-girls, and in the daughters of wealth and fortune. 

They are all alike in their affections — all dreamers 
and idealists ; sympathetic through their sentiment, 
and sentimental through their sympathy ; clutching at 
the rainbow of happiness as if its mistiness were mat- 
ter. 



140 The Great Metropolis. 

Strange to an unprejudiced mind, that the wonder 
working creatures who know where treasures are 
buried, where prizes may be drawn, and how fortunes 
9,re to be made, should not convert their knowledge to 
their own advantage. But they will not ; at least they 
do not. 

While living in dingy rooms in unwholesome neigh- 
borhoods, scant of food and raiment, they inform 
others of the royal road to wealth, but decline to jour- 
ney that way themselves. They are devoted to their 
divine science. They are directors to the goods of the 
World, of which they must not partake. Their souls 
are very rich with wisdom. Their hands must not be 
full of lucre. 

This is Division street, where architecture and clean- 
liness are despised. The houses are old, and soiled, 
and unwholesome. Many families live in each dwell- 
ing. Retail shops abound in the quarter ; and all look 
dusty, stinted and starved. 

Second-hand furniture establishments, porter-houses, 
quack-doctors, green-groceries stare with rheumy eyes 
at each other across the narrow thoroughfares. Rags 
and rickety signs flutter and flap in the unsavory wind. 
Poverty, and trickery, and misfortune abide there 
evidently. 

Division street is one of the walls to which the weak 
and woe-begone are driven in life's hard battle, fought 
over again every day. 

At many grim doorways are smoky, besmeared 
signs, such as "Fortunes Told;" "Madame Belle, 
Astrologer;" "Ida May, Clairvoyant;" "Temple of 
the Unknown;" "The New Oracle;" ",The Great 
A.rabian Physician ; " " Signora Saviltari, Italian Con- 
jurer ; " and others of a still more striking character. 



Fortune- Tellers. 141 

Perhaps at the entrance of these abodes of the niys- 
tagogues, stands an uncombed, unwashed boy — as un- 
weird and unmysterious as can be imagined — with 
misspelled circulars inviting the public, especially you, 
to learn the secrets of the future — whom you will 
marry ; when you will die ; how you will grow rich — 
and whatever your restless spirit hungers to know. 

You go up the uncarpeted staircase, and pause 
before a begrimed door, behind which a tin or painted 
sign informs you, the oracles of the gods are dispensed. 
You are ordered to knock or ring ; and you do so, 
with no other shrinking than that which is inspired by 
bad air, and an unmistakable hatred on the premises 
of soap and water. 

You are ushered in by a colored woman, who requests 
you to be seated, and says her mistress will soon be 
disengaged. You place yourself upon a hard, wooden 
chair, whose back has the lumbago, and whose legs are 
infirm, and look around while you are waiting. 

Nothing but bare walls and a strip of rag carpet in 
the little ante-room. You hear a murmur of voices on 
the other side of the thin partition, perhaps a monoto- 
nous shout, and soon the sound of a bell, and the sable 
portress appears, and you are invited -to enter the / 

presence of the priestess, who unfolds your destiny 
for a dollar in currency, whatever the fluctuation of 
gold. 

Disappointment greets you as you enter. You see 
no paraphernalia of the occult art. No skulls, nor 
bones, nor crucifixes, nor black hangings with triangles 
or circles wrought thereon in crimson or in white ; no 
retorts, nor strange vessels with amber-hued philtres ; 
no large, dark volumes with iron clasps ; no owls, liv- 
ing or stuffed ; no wand or instrument of magic. 



112 The Great Metropolis. 

Even the sorceress is artistically a failure. Neither 
Ayesha nor Kefitah is she. The tall, lithe figure, the 
dark, piercing eye, the deep, solemn voice, you look 
and listen for in vain. 

The priestess is only a gross, fleshy slattern ; and 
she gives out — must I confess it? — such an odor of 
onions and gin that you are convinced she is more 
mortal than mystic. Perhaps she is an Assyrian or an 
Arabian, for she speaks very imperfect English, and 
with a nasal accent that was never born of Delphos. 

She looks at you with blood-shot eyes, and says with 
energy, " One dollar, sir, for gintlemen ; " takes up a 
greasy pack of cards, and proceeds to tell your for- 
tune. 

"Here's a black-haired woman and a light-haired 
woman. Both of 'em is in love with you very bad.. 
Both of 'em wants to marry you. The light-haired 
woman's jealous like ; but t'other'll be yer wife sure." 

" I'm already married, madam, and to a second 
wife." 

"Then the black hair '11 be your third. Yis, yis, I 
see. Here's a fun'ral. Somebody's goin' to die. 
That must be your present wife. Yis, she won't live 
many months, I see in these here cards." 

(I've known some men to look elated over this dis- 
mal intelligence, and depart, after giving the fortune- 
teller an extra dollar, without waiting to hear more.) 

" You're goin' to travel, and git a letter from a dark- 
haired man who seems drunk ; for he's upside down 
in the pack. Some of the men you've knowed, take 
too much wunst in a while, don't they ? " 

" I did not come here to impart confidences, madam." 

" Oh, well, you needn't be snappish. It's so, any- 



Fortune-Tellers. 143 

how ; for tlie cards tells it, and they isn't mistak'n never. 
Let me see. Here's trouble for you — great trouble 
about money. You or your friends is goin' to lose 
somethin'. Some of 'em's goin' to be rich, too, though 
you don't believe it. There'll be a death, too, in your 
family. Yis, here's a coffin and a hearse." 

" Is my wife to die twice ? " 

"No; it will probably be one of your children." 

"I haven't any children." 

"Not born in wedlock, perhaps, but a love-child 
you mayn't know nothin' about. Ycbu know those 
kind of things happens." 

" Confound it, madam, I'm a member of the church." 

" Church-members is mortal like the rest of us." 

"Well, I've heard enough for my dollar." 

" If you'll pay another, I'll tell you how to get rich. 
Just dip your finger in that ere tumbler on the shelf, 
and you'll " 

The remainder of her sentence is lost by the closing 
of the door, which you slam behind you, disgusted as 
you descend to the unpleasant street. 

On your way down, you meet two servant girls, 
with a kind of awe-struck appearance, and at the front 
door, a pale seamstress who is taking her last dollar — 
she was two whole days earning it — to the gross im- 
postor up stairs. 

In the Bowery, above Prince street, a more preten- 
tious type of the fortune-teller may be seen. Her 
surroundings are better, and her charges higher. 

" Consultations five dollars, and strictly confiden- 
tial," her advertisements read. " Patronized by the 
most fashionable people in New- York," too. That is 
something ; for one's future is likely to be better when 
told with that of the prosperous. 



144 The Great Metropolis. 

Handsome carriages often stop a few blocks off, and 
tlie liveried coachmen wait while their mistresses, under 
pretence of visiting the poor, run into the fortune- 
teller's abode. 

Much ceremony there, and an effort made to be 
impressive. The rooms are clean and spacious. The 
principal one is fitted up like a cabinet, and dimly 
lighted. What was wanting in Division street is pro- 
cured in the Bowery. 

Necromantic symbols are abundant. The sorceress 
was formerly an actress, and understands stage arrange- 
ments and the effect of character-costuming. She 
dispenses with cards. She asks her patrons their age, 
their place of nativity, the complexion of parents, the 
number of children ; inquires about moles and marks 
upon the body ; looks into eyes, and examines palms ; 
speaks enigmatically, and assumes the profoundly mys- 
terious, until most of her feminine visitors are con- 
vinced she is a perfect witch, and prepared to believe 
all she tells them. 

In a symbol-covered black or crimson robe, which 
she first wore in some spectacular drama, with a stuffed 
serpent about her neck and a crown of tinsel on her 
head, she talks of the natal planets, of Ormuzd and 
Ahrimanes, of the powers of darkness and the angels 
of light, of the influence of the stars, and the destiny 
of mortals ; turns a sort of planetarium ; handles a 
skull ; burns a powder in a lamp until the cabinet is 
filled with white and crimson lustre ; assumes to 
consult a horoscope ; buries her face in her hands ; 
mutters gibberish, and reveals what the "supernal 
agencies" have whispered to the "daughter of the 
inexorable Destinies." 



i 



Fortune -Tellers. 145 

A dozen of these impostors ply a prosperous trade 
by their mummery. Feminine residents of Fifth av 
enue and Twenty-third street go to the theatrical 
magicians with full faith, and have their lives shaped 
not seldom by what is told them amid stage surround- 



ings. 



Smgular as it may seem, men of business, men who 
deal with facts and figures, who despise imagination 
and laugh at romance, visit such fortune-tellers at 
times, to be told of the future. ' 

Wall street operators invest five dollars to determine 
if they shall buy gold for a rise, or sell Pacific Mail 
short. 

Ship-owners inquire the fate of vessels over-due, 
before they obtain extra insurance. 
^ Church dignitaries, who pretend to believe in noth- 
ing the Bible does not teach, question the oracles of 
the Bowery, touching the lucky number in the April 
lottery. ^ 

Our Gradgrinds are often more superstitious than 
novel-reading school-girls; and the men who despise 
the fancies of poets, are deluded with the shallowest 
tricks. 

^ The trite and homely proverb which says, - Cheat- 
ing luck never thrives," seems to be verified in the 
persons of our fortune-tellers. They make morey in 
various ways. They are purchasable for any purpose 
almost. They act as accoucheuses and abortionists on 
occasion. They will consent to be procuresses, if suf- 
ficient inducement be offered ; will assist in crime and 
hide criminals, whenever their palms are crossed with 
silver. Yet they are generally very poor. 

They are most ascetic in assumption ; talk of fasting 



146 The Great Metropolis. 

and abstemiousness and spirituality as needful to their 
solution of mysteries and penetration of the future. 

Practically they lead loose and sensual lives; have 
coarse appetites and coarse pleasures, until age sets m 
and avarice suppresses other passions. 

As a class, fortune-tellers are unprincipled, improvi- 
dent and profligate. Wickedness is rated by what it 
can pay, and a full purse makes atonement for the 
commission of sin. Like gamblers and cypnans, what 
they gain they do not keep. Ill come, soon gone. 

It is darkly whispered that fashionable women often 
seek the fortune-tellers, not to learn what will be, but 
to consult them upon what has been ; that the determm- 
ers of the future interfere with the results of the past, 
and array themselves against Nature, instead of allymg 
themselves with her to the fullest. ^ 

The life of the fortune-teller is hard. If she sms, 
she atones by penury, and ostracism, and isolation. 
She subsists by her wits, and subsists pooriy. bhe 
shufaes through her meagre and cheeriess je^rs an 
object alike of suspicion and of contempt. All her 
pretended gifts avail her nothing. Her callmg is a 
satire on herself. Advertising her power of blessing, 
no blessing comes to her; and she exchanges her 
drago-led gown at last for the coarse shroud that cov- 
ers her with charity, and shuts her away from woe and 

want forever. 

Many of the seers and clairvoyants are not only 
abortionists, but they are procuresses and the agents 
of bao-nios. They are often directly employed by 
blacklegs and debauchees to secure for them some 
pretty and unsophisticated giri-one from the country 
generally preferred-and liberally paid in the event 
of success. 



Fortune-Tellers. 147 

The scoundrels visit the fortune-tellers, and leave 
several of their photographs, informing the hags what 
they want, much in this wise : 

Can't you get me a nice girl, madam [all of their 
kind are madams]— a really plump creature that has 
lately come to town ? " 

" Well, I don't know. It's a very difficult and dan- 
gerous job. The police might find it out. We're all 

watched, you know ; and if " 

" I'll make it worth your while, I've got money 
enough. You must know I 'run a bank.' Here's $10 
to begin with. Get a girl that suits me, and you shall 
have five times as much." 

"Well, since you're such good pay, I'll try it; but 
I won't promise positive. I'm afraid you're partic'lar. 
What kind of eyes and hair, light or dark ? " 

"I don't care so much about that. I'd rather have 
a black-eyed woman ; but it doesn't make much dif- 
ference, so she's nice and young. You know a pretty 
girl, I'll warrant. I'll trust you. Shall we call it a 
bargain ? " 

"Yes; but mind, mister, I don't promise positive; 
and then you must promise that you won't do anything 
to make a row, and get the police after me ; for you 
know I'm a hard-working woman, and get a living 
honestly." 

" Of course you do, madame ; so do I. When shall 
I call ? to-morrow ? " 

" Lord, no ! You don't suppose we can find willin' 
beauties every minute, do you? Come in 'bout a 
week. Or, give me your number, and I'll drop a line 
to you. I'll do my best ; but I won't promise ; and 
remember, I won't have any fuss. Soon as I get on 
the scent, I'll tell you." 



148 The Great METROroLis. 

After this dialogue, which I refrain from making as 
vul-ar and brutal as the speakers do, the faro-dealer 
goe's away; feeling assured, to use his^ elegant Ian- 
ffua-e, that ''he's got a good thmg of it. 

The very moment a young woman appears who can 
boast of any comeliness, and who seems friendless or 
ingenuous, the seer plies her so adroitly with questions 
as to discover all she wishes to know. She perceives 
that the desire to be loved is in her heart (m what 
woman's is it not ?) ; so she talks to her of her pretti- 
ness and of handsome gentlemen who would be very 
fond of her, if -they only knew her, etc. Then the 
girl's fortune is told, and the man who is to love her is 
described according to the photograph. The lover is 
praised to the skies, and the girl is told to come again 
to have everything revealed that can't be revealed 
then on account of the position of the planets, or some 
such flummery. 

Meantime the seer sends for the lecher, and he con- 
tinues to meet the victim, who finds the prediction ful- 
filled, and considers it her destiny to adore the scoun- 
drel. He flatters her ; declares his passion ; makes an 
appointment with her ; prevails upon her by his arts ; 
uses wine or opiates, and makes her wholly his before 
she has fally recovered from her bewilderment. In a 
few weeks the villain abandons her, and she either 
destroys herself, or seeks to drown memory and con- 
science in a life of shame. 

Few persons are aware to what an extent this spe- 
cies of debauchery is practiced. Many of the pro- 
prietresses of houses of prostitution are in league with 
the fortune-tellers, and pay them for every poor crea- 
ture that falls into their clutches through the super- 



Fortune-Tellers. 149 

natural agents. The police understand this, as they do 
most of the villainies of the city ; but they are often 
made blind and deaf 

God help the poor woman who comes to this sinful 
City penniless and unbefriended ! He may temper the 
wind to the shorn lamb ; but He protects her not from 
the villains who beset her path on every side. 



CHAPTER XY. 
THE BOHEMIANS. 

The term Bohemian, in its modern sense, has been 
erroneously applied to gipsies — the wandering, vaga- 
bond, aimless, homeless class, who, coming originally 
from India, it is believed, entered Europe in the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries and scattered themselves 
through Russia, Hungary, Spain and England. 

In Paris, more than a quarter of a century ago, the 
name was given to the literary and artistic people, who 
were as clever as careless ; who lived in to-day, and 
despised to-morrow ; who preferred the pleasure and 
the triumph of the hour to the ease of prosperity and 
the assurance of abiding fame. Henri Murger, in his 
Vie de Bolieme^ first gave a succinct and clear account 
of the peculiarities, habits and opinions of the true 
Zingara ; lived the life, and died the death, he had so 
eloquently described as the disposition and destiny of 
his class. * 

Since then, all persons of literary or artistic pro- 
clivities, regardless of conventionality, believing in the 
sovereignty of the individual, and indifierent to the 
most solemn tone of Mrs. Grundy, have received the 
Bohemian baptism. Journalists generally, especially 
since the War correspondents during the Rebellion re- 
ceived the title, have been called Bohemians all the 



The Bohemians. 151 

country over, and will be, no doubt, until the end of 

the century. 

Bohemian, particularly in New- York, has indeed 
come to be a sort of synonym for a newspaper writer, 
and not without reason, as he is usually no favorite of 
fortune, and his gifts, whatever they may be, rarely 
include that of practicality. His profession, enabling 
him to see the shams of the World and the hollowness 
of reputation, renders him indifferent to fame, distrust- 
ful of appearances, and skeptical of humanity. He 
sinks into a drudge, relieved by spasms of brilliancy 
and cynicism ; rails at his condition, and clings to it te- 
naciously. Bohemians, however, are older than Henri 
Murger, or the fourteenth century, or the Christian era. 
Alexander of Macedon, Alcibiades, Aspasia, Hypatia, 
Cleopatra, Mark Antony and Julius Caesar, were all 
Bohemians — splendid and dazzling Bohemians, the 
best of their kind, the highest exponents of the antique 
school, of magnificent powers, and melancholy, but 
picturesque endings. 

The Bohemian now-a-days is popularly supposed to 
be a man of some culture and capacity, who ignores 
law and order; who is entirely indifferent to public 
opinion ; who disregards clean linen, his word or his 
debts ; who would borrow the last dollar of his best 
friend, never intending to repay it, and glory in dis- 
honoring his friend's wife or sister. 

That is the common idea ; but I am glad no such 
class exists, however many individuals there may be 
of the kind. It certainly is not true of journalists, 
who are quite as honest and honorable as members of 
any other profession, and who continue poor enough 
to prevent any suspicion to the contrary. 



152 The CTreat Metropolis. 

The Metropolis does contain a number of wi'etched 
men, ill-paid — mostly foreigners — who act occasionally 
as reporters for the daily and weekly papers, and who 
are driven to every shift, and out of every shirt, by 
press of poverty and the exigency of circumstance. 
They are not journalists, however, any more than 
stage-sweepers are dramatic artists. They are to be 
pitied, though, in spite of their faults, for which society 
and temperament are in the main responsible. 

The original Bohemians, in this City and country 
were fifteen or twenty journalists, the gi'eater part of 
them young men of ability and culture, who desired, 
particularly in regard to musical and dramatic criti- 
cism, to give tone and color to, if not to control, the 
public press, not from any mercenary consideration, 
but from an earnest intellectual egotism. They had 
their rise and association about twelve years ago, and 
flourished up to the commencement of the War, which 
broke up the Bohemian fraternity, not only here, but 
in other cities. 

At their head, as well by age as experience and a 
certain kind of domineering dogmatism, was Henry 
Clapp, Jr., who had been connected with a dozen pa- 
pers, and who was one of the first to introduce the 
personal style of Paris feuilleton into the literary 
weeklies. He was nearly twice as old as most of his 
companions ; was witty, skeptical, cynical, daring, and 
had a certain kind of magnetism that drew and held 
men, though he Avas neither in person nor manner, 
what would be exiled attractive. 

Soon after the inception of the informal society, he 
established the Saturday PresSy to which the brother- 
hood contributed for money when they could get it, 



The Bohemians. 153 

and for love "when money could not be had. The 
Saturday Press was really the raciest and brightest 
weekly ever published here. It often sparkled with 
wit, and always shocked the orthodox with its irrever- 
ence and "dangerous" opinions. 

Clapp kept up the paper for a year, when it was 
suspended. After its death he twice revived it; but 
its brilliancy would not keep it alive without business 
management, and it was too independent and icono- 
clastic to incur the favor of any large portion of the 
community. 

The third attempt to establish the Press failed about 
three years since ; and Clapp, bitter from his many 
failures, now lives a careless life ; writes epigramatic 
paragraphs and does the dramatic for one of the week- 
lies. He is stated to be over fifty ; but his mind is 
vigorous as ever, his tongue as fluent, and his pen as 
sharp. 

E. G. P. ("Ned") Wilkins, of the Herald, was an- 
other prominent member of the fraternity, and one of 
the few attaches of that journal who have ever gained 
much individual reputation. He was a pungent and 
strong writer, at the same time correct and graceful, 
and had the requisite amount of dogmatism and self- 
consciousness to render him acceptable to his guild and 
satisfactory to himself When he promised far better 
things than he had ever performed, he died, leaving 
no other record than the file of newspapers — the silent 
history of countless unremembered men of genius. 

William Winter, who came here from Boston, after 
graduating at Harvard, because he believed New- York 
offered the best field for writers, was a contributor to the 
Saturday Press and other weeklies ; composed many 
clever poems, and did whatever literary work he could 



154 The Great Metropolis. 

find at hand ; supporting himself comfortably by his 
pen, and gaining considerable reputation, particularly 
as a poet. A few years ago he married a literary wo- 
man and has not since been much of a Bohemian ; for 
Hymen is an enemy to the character, and domesticity 
its ultimate destroyer. He is now dramatic critic of 
the Tribune^ and a very hard worker; deeming it a 
duty to perform whatever labor comes to him with- 
out seeking. 

Edward H. House, for years connected with the 
Tribune^ was a fourth friend of Clapp and also a 
Saturday Press contributor. He has quitted journal- 
ism, at least for the time, and made a good deal of 
money, it is said, by sharing the authorship of some, 
and being the agent in this country of all of Bouci- 
cault's plays. House is a good fellow, handsome, well- 
bred, winning in manners ; is still a bachelor ; does 
little work and gets a good deal for it ; and enjoys 
himself as a man of the World ought 

Fitz James O'Brien, who made his debut in the lit- 
erary world, as the author of Diamond Lens in the 
Atlantic Monthly ten years ago, and who was a gener- 
ous, gifted, rollicking Irishman, was one of the cardi- 
nals in the high church of Bohemia, until the breaking 
out of the War. He entered the field and distinguished 
himself for desperate courage until he was killed in 
Virginia and forgotten. O'Brien had a warm heart, a 
fine mind and a liberal hand ; but he was impulsiv^e to 
excess and too careless of his future for his own good. 

Charles F. Browne, having been made famous 
through his "Artemus Ward" articles while local editor 
of the Cleveland (0.) Plaindealer^ and come to the Me- 



The Bohemians. 155 

tropolis, where clever men naturally tend, worked to 
advantage his droll vein for the Saturday Press, Vanity 
Fair and J/rs. Grundy. He was a pure Bohemian, 
thoroughly good-natured, incapable of malice toward 
any one, with a capacity for gentleness and tenderness, 
like a woman's, open-handed, imprudent, seeing every- 
thing at a queer angle, and always wondering at his 
own success. He drew about him in New-York a 
number of the knights of the quill ; gained their es- 
teem and affection, and left a vacancy in the circle and 
their sympathies when his kindly soul went out across 
the sea. 

George Arnold was a very clever writer in prose 
and verse, a regular contributor to the Saturday Press, 
and remarkable for his versatility. He had many 
gifts ; was good-looking, graceful, brilliant. His easy, 
almost impromptu poems, full of sweetness and sug- 
gestive sadness, have been published since his death, 
which took place three years ago, and been widely 
admired. He sang in a careless way the pleasures and 
the pains of love, the joys of wine, the charm of in- 
dolence, the gayety and worthlessness of existence in 
the true Anacreontic vein. From such a tempera- 
ment as his, earnest and continued exertion was not to 
be expected. Like Voiture he trifled life away -in 
pointed phrases and tuneful numbers ; but gained a 
large circle of devoted friends. At three and thirty 
he slipped out of the World which had been much 
and little to him, and left behind him many sincere 
mourners who speak of him still with words of love 
and moistened eyes. 

William North, a young Englishman, — he had quar- 
reled with his parents who were wealthy, and come 



156 The Great Metropolis. 

to this country to live by his pen, — was also of the 
Bohemian tribe. He found the struggle harder than 
he had anticipated ; for, though a man of talent and 
culture, he lacked directness of purpose and capacity 
for continuous work. His disappointment soured him, 
and poverty so embittered his sensitive nature that he 
destroyed himself, leaving a sixpence, all the money 
he had, and the " Slave of the Lamp," a manuscript 
novel, which he had not been able to sell, but for 
which the notoriety of the mournful tragedy secured 
a publisher. 

Mortimer Thompson, who had become a popular 
humorist under the sobriquet of " Doesticks," and who 
was at the hight of his popularity, was a Bohemian in 
those days, and consorted with the clever crew. He 
was then a member of the Tribune staff Since that 
time he has been a war correspondent ; had various 
changes of fortune, and no longer enjoys his old fame. 
He still lives in New- York, however, and does the 
drollery for some of the weekly papers over his old nom 
de jjiicme. 

Charles Dawson Slianly, a well-known litteirateur, 
Harry Neal (deceased), Frank Wood (deceased), con- 
tributors to Vanity Fair and other publications of 
the time, Charles B. Seymour, now dramatic critic of 
the Times^ Franklin J. Ottarson, for five and twenty 
years a city journalist, nearly all of which he has 
spent in the servive of the Tribune; Charles Gay- 
ler, a playwright ; John S. Dusolle of the Sunday Times, 
and others were members of the fraternity. They met 
frequently at Pfaff's restaurant. No. 653 Broadway ; 
had late suppers, and were brilliant with talk over 
beer and pipes for several years. Those were merry 



The Bohemians. 157 

and famous nights, and many bright conceits and wit- 
ticisms were discharged over the festive board. 

The Bohemians had feminine companions at Pfaft's 
frequently. There was Ada Clare, known as here then 
as the queen of Bohemia, and of course a writer for 
the Saturday Press. She was of Irish extraction ; a 
large-hearted eccentric woman who had property in 
the South, but lost it during the War. She afterward 
published a novel, "Only a Woman's Heart," said to 
have been a transcript of some of her own experiences, 
and went upon the stage. The last heard of her she 
was playing in a Galveston (Texas) theatre, and had 
been married to the manager. There was a pretty 
little creature, known as Getty Gay, probably an as- 
sumed name, and Mary Fox, both actresses ; Jennie 
Danforth, a writer for the weekly journals; Annie 
Deland, still on the boards, and Dora Shaw, who was the 
best Camille on the American stage. The ill-flited 
Adah Menken, also went to Pfaffs occasionally ; and 
altogether the coterie enjoyed itself intellectually and 
socially as no coterie has since. But all that has passed 
now. 

The War, as I have said, interfered with Bohemian 
progress. Many have become apostates now, and 
others deny all connection with the fraternity. The 
order in its old form is practically extinct ; but with- 
out the distinguishing name or any organization, but 
better, and higher, and freer, and purer, it exists, and 
does good, though it may be invisible, work. 

I might give a long list of city writers and journal- 
ists well known throughout the country, who are Bo- 
hemians in the best sense, but who dislike the title 
because so many unworthy persons have made the 
name repulsive by claiming it as theirs. 



158 The Great Metropolis. 

Certain reporters are largely of the^pseudo-Bohe- 
mian class, and do more to degrade journalism than all 
the worthy members of the profession to elevate and 
purify it. And for the reason that the former are im- 
pudent, sycophantic and unprincipled, while the latter 
are modest, independent and honorable. If newspa- 
per proprietors would adopt the wise policy of employ- 
ing good men at good salaries, the disreputable class 
would find their level and cease to be a nuisance, at 
least in the vicinity of Printing-House Square. 

The true disciples are men and women who are 
charitable where the World condemns ; who protect 
where society attacks; who have the cajDacity and 
courage to think for themselves ; the earnestness and 
truthfulness to unmask shams ; the faith to believe sin 
the result of ignorance, and love and culture eternal 
undoers of evil and of wrong. They honestly dis- 
charge every duty and every debt. Their ways- are 
pleasant and their manners sweet. They are misun- 
derstood because they are in advance of the time, and 
have comprehensive views the great mass cannot take. 

Such Bohemians are found in the pulpit, on the 
bench, on the tripod ; and every day they are increas- 
ing the area of Thought, the breadth of Charity, the 
depth of Love. Children of Nature, they go not about 
with solem faces, declaring after the common fashion, 
the degeneracy of the age and the wickedness of hu- 
manity. They have a hope and creed born of reason 
and spiritual insight; believing that God and Good 
are identically the same ; that Progress is onward and 
upward forever and ever. 



CHAPTER XYI. 
THE LAGER-BEER GARDENS. 

The difference between a lager -beer saloon and a 
lager-beer garden among our German fellow-citizens is 
very slight; the garden, for the most part, being a 
creation of the brain. To the Teutonic fancy, a hole 
in a roof, a fir-tree in a tub, and a sickly vine or two 
in a box, creeping feebly upward unto death, corsti- 
tute a garden. Perhaps their imagination is assisted 
by their potations, more copious than powerful, which 
enable it to conjure up groves and grottoes, and walks, 
and fountains that are not there in reality. Be this as 
it may, the Germans accept what is called a garden as 
such, and neither criticise nor complain of its striking 
inadequacies. 

New- York, probably, has a German population of 
one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand; and 
it is a part of the social duty of every one of these, if 
not a point in his worldly religion, to drink beer, — the 
quantity varying with the intensity of his nationality. 
Germans and beer are related to each other as cause 
and effect ; and, one given, the other must follow of ne- 
cessity. 

Manhattan, from the battery to Harlem bridge, is 
covered with beer-saloons and gardens. They are in 
longitudinal and lateral directions, in the broad thor- 



160 The Great Metropolis. 

ouglifares of Broadway and Third avenue, and in the 
out-of-the-way and narrow quarters of Ann and Thames 
streets. The whole island literally foams and froths 
with the national beverage of Rhineland; and, from 
sunrise until midnight, (Sunday excepted, if you have 
faith in the Excise Law), the amber hued liquid flows 
constantly from more than ten thousand kegs, and is 
poured into twenty times as many thirsty throats, and 
highly-eupeptic and capacious stomachs. 

There must be in New-York three or four thousand 
lager-beer establishments, kept and patronized almost 
exclusively by Germans, who tend to beer-selling in 
this country as naturally as Italians to image-making 
and organ-grinding. These establishments are of all 
sizes and kinds, from the little hole in the corner, with 
one table and two chairs, to such extensive concerns 
as the Atlantic garden, in the Bowerj^, and Hamilton 
and Lyon parks, in the vicinity of Harlem, not to men- 
tion their superabundance in Jersey-City, Hoboken, 
Brooklyn, Hudson-City, Weehawken and every other 
point within easy striking distance of the Metropolis 
by rail and steam. 

Of course, Sunday is the day of all the week for 
patronage of such places, for Teutonic recreation and 
bibulous enjoyment; and hence the bitter opposition 
to the Excise Law on the part of the Germans, the 
greater part of whom are Republicans, but who are not 
less hostile on that account to the Republican measure. 
They are determined to have beer on Sundays, and 
are making every possible effort to render the odious 
law inoperative by declaring it unconstitutional. They 
have opened their purses wide, which they rarely do 
unless terribly in earnest, to regain what they believe 



The Lager-Beer Gardens 161 

to be tlieir rights ; and they will never cease agitating 
the question until permitted to absorb beer when, 
where, and to what extent they please. 

The question, Will lager-beer intoxicate ? first arose, 
I believe, on this island, and, very naturally too, con- 
sidering the quality of the manufactured article. I have 
sometimes wondered, however, there could be any 
question about it, so inferior in every respect is the 
beer made and sold in the Metropolis. It is undoubt- 
edly the worst in the United-States — weak, insipid, 
unwholesome, and unpalatable; but incapable of in- 
toxication, I should judge, even if a man could hold 
enough to float the Dunderberg. It is impossible to 
get a good glass of beer in New- York, and persons, 
who have not drank it in the West have no idea what 
poor stuff is here called by the name. 

One would suppose the vast body of Germans in 
this City would insist upon having excellent lager ; but 
they do not. They seem quite satisfied with the thin, 
semi-nauseating liquid that tastes generally as if it were 
the product of aloes, brown-soap and long-standing 
Croton; and are not nauseated over its excessive ab- 
sorption. 

Peradventure they regard it as they do their "gar- 
dens," — idealize it completely. Their palate tells them 
it is a wretched cheat ; an insult to the German sense 
of appreciation ; an indignity offered to their digestion. 
But their imagination makes it what they like ; and 
they drain their glasses with the flavor of their fancy 
moistening their lips. 

The Germans are an eminently gregarious and social 
people, and all their leisure is combined with and com- 
prehends lager. They never dispense with it. They 
11 



162 The Great Metropolis. 

drink it in the morning, at noon, in the evening and 
late at night ; during their labors and their rest ; alone 
and with their friends; and yet we never hear of their 
floating away upon the swollen stream of their own imbi- 
bitions, or of their ribs cracking and falling off, like 
the hoops of barrels, from over-expansion. The chief 
end of man has long been a theme of discussion among 
theologians and philosophers. The chief end of that 
portion who emigrate from Fatherland is to drink lager, 
under all circumstances and on all occasions; and the 
end is faithfully and perseveringly carried out. 

The drinking of the Germans, however, is free from 
the vices of the Americans. The Germans indulge in 
their lager rationally, even when they seem to carry 
indulgence to excess. They do not squander their 
means; they do not waste their time; they do not 
quarrel; they do not fight; they do not ruin their own 
hopes and the happiness of those who love them, as 
do we of hotter blood, finer fibre, and intenser organ- 
ism. They take lager as we do oxygen into our lungs, — 
appearing to live and thrive upon it. Beer is one of 
the social virtues; Gambrinus a patron saint of every 
family, — the protecting deity of every well-regulated 
household. 

The Germans combine domesticity with their dissi- 
pation, — it is that to them literally, — taking with them 
to the saloon or garden their wives and sisters and 
sweethearts, often their children, who are a check to 
any excess or impropriety, and with whom they depart 
at a seemly hour, overflowing with beer and honliom- 
mie, possessed of those two indispensables of peace — 
an easy mind and a perfect digestion. 

Look at them as they once were, and will be again, 



The Lager-Beer Gardens. 163 

in Lyon or Hamilton park, on a Sunday afternoon or 
evening. They are assembled at the popular resort to 
the number of four or five thousand, — men, women and 
children, persons of every grade and calling, but all 
speaking the same language and liking the same drink, 
which perhaps, more than aught else, makes them a 
homogeneous and sympathetic people. How entirely 
contented, and even joyous, are they ! The humblest 
and hardest toilers are radiant with self-satisfaction, as 
if there were neither labor nor care to-morrow. They 
drink, and laugh and chat energetically and boister- 
ously, as if they really relished it, and smoke, and sing 
and dance, and listen appreciatively to music, day after 
day, and night after night, never tiring of their pleas- 
ures, never seeking for a change. 

Their life is simple, and included within a little 
round. Dyspepsia and nervous disorders trouble them 
not. Every day they labor; every night they rest, 
laying a solid bar of sleep between the days; each 
year adding something to their worldly store; always 
living below their means; thrilled by no rapturous 
glow; disturbed by no divine ideals; speculative, but 
calm; thoughtful, but healthy ; comfortable, but thrifty; 
resolved to have and own something, if years are given 
to them, and making their resolution gpod in real es- 
tate, brick houses, and government securities. 

How can they enjoy themselves so? think the pale, 
taciturn, eager-looking Americans at the table oppo- 
site. What do they find to talk about so volubly, and 
laugh at so loudly? How eloquent and witty they 
must be ! 

Neither the one nor the other, you will discover, if 
you listen. They are simple as Arcadians. Little things 



164 The Great Metropolis. 

amuse, trifles interest them. The commonest circum- 
stances, the mere mention of which would weary you, 
my American friend, are subjects of protracted discus- 
sion ; and they roar over what would seem to you the 
merest insipidities. You may be as witty as Voltaire 
and sparkling as Rochefoucault to your companions. 
They only smile and look bored again. The most 
expensive wines stand untasted before you. The great 
glory of the night, and the beauties of Beethoven and 
Mozart fall upon you and your friends unmoved ; while 
your German neighbors drink them all in with their 
lager, and burst into rapturous applause 

Subtle influences those of race and temperament, 
which nothing can change! Ours is a melancholy 
brotherhood over whom the Starry Banner waves, and 
we have purchased our freedom and progress at the 
price of much of our content. Lager delights you 
not, nor Limberger either; and the centuries-distant 
blood of (Edipus is in your veins. 

It is a goodly sight to see the Germans, who eat and 
drink, but eat as they do everything else, with a pur- 
pose. No elaborate dainties, no recherche viands, no 
delicate entremets for them. Brown-bread and cara- 
way seed, sweitzerkase and Limberger, which no nos- 
tril or stomach out of Germany can endure, solid ham, 
Bologna sausage and blood-puddings appease their 
vigorous appetites, and preserve their ruddy health ; 
while pipes of strong and by no means choice tobacco 
yield them all the repose they require. 

What a racket they keep up in the pauses of the 
music, even while it is being played. Food, and drink, 
and talk, and laughter, hour after hour. They raise 
their voices; they grow red in the face; they gesticu- 



The Lager-Beer Gardens. 165 

late; they strike the tables; they seem on the point of 
mortal conflict; and an American who knew them not 
would believe murder was about to be committed. 

But it is only their way. They are merely discuss- 
ing the last masquerade, or the claims of Sigel to mil- 
itary reputation. Another round of lager — each per- 
son pays for his own glass — will mollify any asperity 
that may have arisen. Another plate of sweitzer will 
change the theme, if it be an unpleasant one, and a 
cabbage-leaf cigar will dissolve into thin air the last 
traces of ill- temper. 

The Atlantic Garden is a favorite resort of the Ger- 
mans, and one of the noticeable places of New- York. 
It is all under cover, and capable of accommodating 
twenty-five hundred or three thousand people. It has 
a large bar-room in front, and smaller ones inside ; a 
shooting gallery, billiard and bowling saloons, a huge 
orchestrion, which performs during the day, and a fine 
band that gives selections from celebrated composers 
during the evening. The entire place is filled with 
small tables and benches, which are crowded every 
evening with drinkers and smokers. A confusion of 
ringing glasses, of loud voices speaking German in 
high key, of laughter and strains of soft music, float up 
through tobacco smoke to the arched roof until mid- 
night, when the musicians put away their instruments, 
the lights are turned out, and the vast place is locked 
up. 

The Atlantic is the most cosmopolitan place of en- 
tertainment in the City ; for, though the greater part 
of its patrons are Germans, every other nationality is 
represented there. French, Irish, Spaniards, English, 
Italians, Portuguese, even Chinamen and Indians, may 



166 The Great Metropolis. 

be seen througli the violet atmosphere of the famons 
Atlantic; while Americans, who have learned to like 
lager — even that made in Gotham — and who are fond 
of music, sit at the little tables, and look like doomed 
spirits beside their round-faced, square-browed, jolly 
neighbors. Much may be had there for little, which 
is less recommendation to the Americans than to the 
Germans; and they who desire cheap concerts — one 
may sit there all the evening without a single glass of 
beer, if he is so minded — can have them every evening 
in the year. 

With all their industry, and economy, and thrift, the 
Germans find ample leisure to enjoy themselves, and 
at little cost. Their pleasures are never expensive. 
They can obtain more for $1 than an American for 
$10, and can, and do, grow rich upon what our people 
throw away. They are odd compounds of sentiment 
and materialism, of poetry and prose, of generous 
emotion and narrow life, of aifection and selfishness, of 
dullness and shrewdness, of romance and practicality, 
of opposites of many kinds, but altogether blending 
into praiseworthy prudence, honesty, industry and en- 
terprise. They are always endeavoring to improve 
their condition; and, from their constant self-seeking, 
they soon acquire property, carefully educate their 
children, ally their descendants to those of Anglo- 
Saxon blood, and in a few generations become as thor- 
oughly American as the Americans themselves. 



CHAPTER XVn. 

THE CHURCHES. 

The clmrclies are a power in New- York They are 
excellent in themselves, and but for them the City 
would be much worse than it is; for they have a re- 
straining influence upon the community, and compel 
Vice to pay a certain deference to Virtue. 

The Metropolis has about five hundred churches, 
of almost every denomination under the sun, and the 
value of the entire church property on the island is 
estimated at $300,000,000. Much of the most desira- 
ble real estate here is owned by ecclesiastical societies, 
and additions to it are constantly being made. Trin- 
ity corporation alone is said to be worth $60,000,000, 
and yet its members feel so very poor that they fre- 
quently solicit charity, and never ring the chimes on 
secular festal days without compelling the City to pay 
for the discordant and painfully monotonous tintinnab- 
ulation. 

The architecture of the churches is an ornament to 
New-York, and the grounds surrounding them are among 
the handsomest here. Few private churches can afford to 
occupy so much space as the religious edifices do, — 
perhaps because the orthodox who are truly charitable 
reverse the expression, believing they lend to the poor 
by giving to the Lord. It is certainly creditable to 



168 The Great MEXROPOLig. 

the churches that they are willing to retain such ample 
inclosures, even in the heart of the Metropolis, instead 
of selling them, as is so often done elsewhere. There 
must be some faith in and some reverence for religion 
when it is superior to pecuniary interests; for the 
purse-strings are often drawn so tight as to strangle 
the soul. 

Broadway, Fifth avenue. Twenty-third, and other 
principal streets can boast of the finest and most ex- 
pensive churches in the country. Their elaborateness 
and elegance are not confined to sect either ; for the 
Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the 
Methodists and Catholics vie with each other in rear- 
ing showy temples in honor of their God. They evi- 
dently think His sense of beauty equal to His sense of 
mercy, and that prayers from gilded altars will be 
more likely to propitiate Him than if they ascended 
from homely pulpits. The early Christians believed 
otherwise, and the groves were the first temples of the 
Deity ; but theology, like other things, must advance 
and change, and the most sacred creed can not be 
wholly conservative. 

No reasoning mind can doubt the excellent influ- 
ence of churches, whatever their denomination, upon 
most natures ; and though there may be, and doubtless 
are, those who are a law and religion to themselves, 
requiring neither form nor restraint, confirmation, dis- 
cipline and example are of vast importance and benefit 
to the mass of believers. That religion is often em- 
ployed as the cloak of sin proves nothing against re- 
ligion, but merely the disposition of humanity to hy- 
pocrisy. It is to be regretted, however, that religion 
has grown so much a matter of fashion and respecta- 



The Churches. 169 

bility as to furnisli targets for the satirical arrows of 
skeptics and of scoffers. 

Especially is this the case in New York, and it is 
becoming more and more so every year. Hundreds 
of persons of both sexes deem themselves privileged 
to sin all the week, if they attend Divine service on 
Sunday. They seem to imagine Jehovah attracted by 
glare, and pomp, and lavishness ; and His eyes so daz- 
zled by material_ splendor that He cannot, or will not, 
perceive their most palpable defects. They imitate 
the French nobleman of the ancient rSgime, who de- 
clared the Lord would think twice before He conclu- 
ded to damn a personage of Ms quality. 

" Purchase or rent a pew," the church fashionable 
appears to say, " and you shall be absolved from wrong- 
doing." 

"Be rich and much shall be forgiven you." 

" The way of the transgressor is hard ; but the way 
of the poor man is harder." 

" It is easy to obtain a pardon of heaven when you 
get it in a Bible with gold clasps." 

Look into the stately granite edifice. But before 
you do so, see if you are in proper guise. You wear 
a suit of fashionably cut black ; your boots fit neat^'y ; 
your gloves are fresh, and of Courooisier's make ; you 
have the odor of jasmine on your person ; you can 
enter unquestioned and sanctified, particularly if you 
are distingue in appearance, and look like a person of 
substantial means. The portly, oleaginous, rather 
pompous sexton will beam upon you, and show you to 
a seat with alacrity. There is a species of gentleness 
and courtesy engendered by Christianity, you think, 
as you receive the honors of the temple. While you 



170 The Great Metropolis. 

are so occupied, a pale, quiet-looking man enters, in a 
threadbare suit, though "gentleman" is written in his 
face, and over all his form. The above sexton scowls 
at him a moment, and turns away. He walks nervously 
and blunderingly up the aisle. No one opens a pew- 
door for him. He glances around uneasily, and his 
color deepens as he turns and walks out. He is not a 
man. He is of the peculiar class styled "persons" by 
upper servants in the fashionable avenue. 

He certainly must have been a stranger ; otherwise 
he would have known better than to obtrude upon a 
fashionable congregation in Broadway. He probably 
mistook it for Sixth avenue, where the Creator listens 
to invocations from His creatures regardless of their 
apparel. 

This church with its congregation is a pleasant vision. 
No wonder the people repeat the litany so gently, and 
after the manner prescribed by Mrs. General, They 
are too prosperous to feel the need of worship. They 
give the idea of patronizing the Deity, as if they said, 
" Good Lord, we approve of Thee while Thou assurest 
us steady and liberal incomes. Be careful and watch 
over our interests. Make the society of Heaven ex- 
clusive if Thou would'st have us come there. Don't 
permit the vulgar to profane it. If they do, we must 
withhold our presence, and that would grieve Thee, 
poor God, who wert made for us alone, as Thou 
knowest in Thy wisdom." 

How precise and elegant is everything and every- 
body in the church ! The music is executed fiultlessly, 
and after the style of the Academy. You forget the 
words and place in the skillful execution of the trills 
and bravuras. 



1 



The Churches. 171 

" The members of the choir sing well," you whisper 
to your neighbor. 

"Why should they not?" he answers. "They are 
paid very liberally for it," as if he designed intimating 
to Providence that He should appreciate the favor done 
Him. 

The pastor is daintily dressed, and reads the prayers 
with arduous affectation and an almost total omission 
of the R sound. He shows his delicate hand to ad- 
vantage, and uses his perfumed handkerchief grace- 
fully, and exactly at the right periods. 

The worshipers are costumed as carefully as if they 
were at the opera. The building is thoroughly ven- 
tilated, and redolent of the soft, almost voluptuous, 
odor which emanates from the toilets of refined women. 
They look devout with a mathematical uniformity and 
precision. They fare sumptuously; they pay their 
minister $10,000 a year, and are acceptable in the 
sight of Delmonico and the Deity. 

How pious appears that elderly man ! Well he 
might ; for his remaining years are few, and the most 
profligate can give to the service of Heaven the little 
period in which sin is a physical impossibility. And 
yet he is a Sabbatarian merely. To-morrow he will 
falsify and cheat his best friend in an operation in 
Broad street. His colossal fortune has been built 
upon misrepresentations — upon the adroit tricks which 
plain people would call stealing. 

Yonder handsome woman is earnest in her orisons. 
The tears are under her eye-lids ; her white forehead 
is wrinkled with intensity of emotion. She is praying 
that her love, who is across the sea, may return to her 
safely, and kiss her fashionable anxieties away. Of 



172 The Great Metropolis. 

her disloyalty to her husband — who, with head resting 
devoutly on his hands, is reflecting on the last fall in 
"domestics" — she thinks not; for long custom and 
much passion have reconciled her to her sin. 

This sweet-faced girl is peering through her open 
fingers in envy at the bonnet of her next-pew neigh- 
bor, which is twice as pretty as her own, and which, 
to employ her own phrase, she is dying to possess. 
She forgets her Bible and her prayer-book in her 
absorption upon that " sweet hat," and all her rehgion 
would not enable her to forgive the "creature" for her 
good fortune in securing the dainty pattern. 

One of the pillars of the church, as he is called, 
should be called one of the sleepers ; for, with his head 
resting on his hand, he has for the past half-hour been 
unconscious of his whereabout. Casuists have said, 
" Man cannot sin in sleep." Perhaps that is the reason 
so many virtuous souls slumber through Sunday ser- 
vice. 

Let us go further up town, to even a more liberal 
church, to which, a cynical wit has said, " No man who 
loves his wife, or a woman who loves her husband is 
admissible." Without aught that can be termed a 
creed, many of the bravest and truest spirits gather 
there every Sabbath, and gain strength and consola- 
tion from the teachings of their skeptically Christian 
clergyman. Most of his congregation believe more in 
good works than in faith ; and yet the best of them 
are weak, and fail of their intent, as all of us must do, 
strive as we may. 

The organ peals through this crowded temple, where 
many are kneeling, even into the street. The robes 
are rich ; the incense is aromatic ; the music is choice. 



The Churches. 173 

How entirely devout do these humble worshippers ap- 
pear? They bend almost to the marble pavement; 
they seem to agonize with repentance. Unquestion- 
ably they are contrite. They resolve to sin no more ; 
and to-morrow they violate half the commandments. 

The spirit may be strong ; but the flesh is weak. Is 
it not so with all of us, whatever our belief? What 
is life but misdeed and repentance, and repentance and 
misdeed ? It may be true that we do what we must, 
and call it by the best name we can. 

The Metropolis is not favored, according to its size 
and pretensions, with particularly able or eloquent 
divines ; though if you take the word of each congre- 
gation, there are as many men of genius in the pulpit 
as there are churches. 

Ministers in the City, thought to be as gifted as 
Chrysostom or Thomas Aquinas, have power to put 
persons troubled with nervous disorders more pro- 
foundly to sleep than a dormouse in mid- winter. Some 
have good thoughts and much learning ; but they spoil 
all by their manner, and they would, though they had 
the thought of Shakspeare and the style of Plato. 

Pulpit oratory has long been peculiar, not to say 
vicious, mainly from the fact that clergymen have 
feared to become theatrical. 

So far as I have observed, there is no imminent 
danger of the clerical profession falling into that fault. 

Let them not be alarmed. They can change their 
style greatly, and yet never be suspected of dramatic 
tendencies. Let them be convinced without a revela- 
tion from Heaven, that strained pronunciation, and 
drawling, and the twisting of syllables out of their 
recognition, are no more agreeable to the Eternal 



174 The Great Metropolis. 

Father than naturalness and the common graces of 
elocution. 

If we have so much fashionable religion in New- 
York, we have more that is earnest, true, devoted. 
We have men and women whose lives are a long sac- 
rifice and offering of their highest and best for the 
good and happiness of their fellows. 

There are humble and wayside temples of God, 
where elegance is not the price of virtue, but where 
charity is so regarded still. 

We have men and women devoid of all sentimental 
and sensational sensibilities, who, in silent ways, bind 
up wounded hearts, minister to the needy, (and they 
are of many and different creeds,) and quarrel not 
with those seeking their own way to Heaven — believ- 
ing all true Christianity consists in doing unto others 
as ye would that they should do unto you. 

If great hypocrisy, and untruth, and insincerity be 
masked with religion, there are virtues hidden in it 
so deeply that only he who seeks for good in all, with 
a sympathetic spirit, can find them, and all the purer 
and meeker for their concealment and unsuspected 
being. 



•CHAPTER XVni. 
THE THEATERS. 

Wh A.T is known in dramatic circles as a metropolitan 
reputation or success, and the need that an artiste 
should be indorsed here before acceptance by the 
"provinces," seems to have become positively indis- 
pensable. There is incalculable advantage in making a 
first appearance and gaining favor here ; and the advan- 
tage is not merely apparent, it is actual. It enables 
agents and managers to make engagements elsewhere ; 
and the country is always anxious to know the character 
and extent of the reception in New-York. 

New-York almost always includes fifty to a hundred 
thousand strangers from every quarter of the Union ; 
and these compose the great body of our play-goers 
and amusement-seekers. Even when cultivated and 
fastidious, they are in no mood or mind for criticism 
on such occasions. They rush to the theater to get 
rid of themselves, — to kill an evening ; and their sat- 
isfaction is a foregone conclusion. It matters little to 
them whether it be Wallack's, Tony Pastor's, the 
Academy, or the San Francisco Minstrels, — an elegant 
comedy, a new opera, a leering ballet-girl, or a Vir- 
ginia break-down. They go to enjoy themselves, and 
they do, without regarding the entertainment artisti- 
cally, or analyzing the source of their gratification. 

New- York has usually about twelve theaters, or 



1<^6 The Great Metropolis. 

places where lyric and dramatic entertainments are 
given ; and they are so well patronized generally, that if 
their managers do not become rich, it must be because 
of their improvidence. Four of our theaters, not to 
speak of Barnum's Museum, were burned within a year. 

Barnum's museums, both the old and the new, were 
serious losses to the country people, Avho regarded them 
as the loudest-roaring lions of the town. The famous 
establishment at the corner of Ann street and Broad- 
way, where the Herald now stands, was for years the 
center of attraction for our rural cousins, who felt after 
they had looked on the ''one hundred thousand curi- 
osities" the great showman advertised, and had visited 
"the lecture room," that the best of the City had been 
seen. When it was burned, and the daily journals 
printed burlesque accomits of the conflicts of the 
stuffed beasts and the thrilling achievements of the 
wax figures, many of our rustic friends believed the 
narratives sincere ; throbbed with intense sympathy, 
and mourned over the irreparable loss. 

The Academy has been rebuilt, and new and better 
dramatic temples will supply the place of the others. 
New theatres are now either in process of erection or 
projected ; so there is slender prospect of any diminu- 
tion of histrionic entertainments in the City. 

The Academy, though incomplete in its interior ar- 
rangement, is much of an improvement on the old 
opera house, and may be considered a graceful and 
elegant cage for our Tuscan birds of song. Taste for 
the opera, like that for olives, is generally acquired — 
the result of culture ; and, during the past ten years it 
has grown popular, not only in New- York, but in other 
cities. 




NEW YOliK I'lLOT BOAT. 




LU\L\1 s M[ sj LM, iSbO 



I 



The Theaters. 177 

The early embarkers in lyric enterprises had hard 
fortunes and grievous failures here ; and Max. Maret- 
zek's recent success has not been very brilliant. He 
came to America very poor, and according to his ac- 
count he has been losing money ever since. How a 
man who had nothing to begin with can constantly be 
declining in means, and yet have a comfortable income 
can be determined only by the musical scale peculiar 
to the Continent. 

The opera in New-York though thoroughly appre- 
ciated, and enjoyed, is supported as much for fashion 
as for art's sake. At least one-third, if not one-half, 
of the boxes are nightly filled by persons who would 
not go there if it were not the mode, and if it did not 
give them an opportunity to indulge their love of 
dress. 

To have a box at the opera is considered as essen- 
tial by pretenders to the liaut ton as to have a house on 
Fifth avenue, or a pew in Grace church. Consequently 
one sees men and women in full dress boring them- 
selves mercilessly in Irving Place or Pike's Opera 
House night after night, and declaring they are de- 
lighted, when they cannot distinguish a cavatina from 
a recitative. Those indifferent to the opera at first 
come to like it after a while, if they have any ear for 
time or tune, and even to have a passion for it at last; 
so that fashion may finally create what it originally af- 
fected. 

Operas have been better and more effectively pre- 
sented during the past few seasons, and this commu- 
nity has become sufficiently cultivated and discrimi- 
nating to demand a certain degree of excellence in 
the lyric drama. 

12 



178 The Great Metropolis. 

Pike's Opera House lias been called the liandsomest 
theater in the world, though a little more simplicity iu 
its interior would be desirable. Its vestibule is beau- 
tiful and imposing, and the auditorium, when lighted, 
is brilliant in the extreme. The Opera House some- 
what resembles the Grand Opera at Paris, and is much 
finer than the famous La Scala at Milan or the San Carlo 
at Naples, which are great, dreary, dingy, uncomfort- 
able houses that few persons admire after having vis- 
ited them. It is very remarkable that Samuel N. Pike, 
a comparative stranger, should have built with his in- 
dividual means an opera house at an expense of nearly 
$1,000,000, when a crowd of wealthy New-Yorkers 
were with difficulty induced to put up the Academy 
of Music, even with the privilege of occupying the 
best seats by virtue of being stockholders. 

Pike is certainly enterprising and generous to the 
verge of audacity ; for he is the only man in the City 
capable of expending a great fortune on what at the 
time of its expenditure gave little hope of return. He 
has lately sold his Opera House to the Erie Railway 
Company for an advance on its cost ; but the theater 
will be retained, it is said. I fear it won't be, unless 
it is found to be a good investment, which is not prob- 
able, so far is its location — Eighth avenue and Twenty- 
third street — removed from the fashionable quarter. I 
sincerely hope the Opera House won't be disturbed, for 
New- York cannot afford to be deprived of so elegant a 
temple of art. 

For Booth's new theater, J'ifth avenue and Twenty- 
third street, large promises have been made. It is not 
yet finished ; but it will be superior, no doubt, to any 
other theater in the United States. Edwin Booth has 



I 



The Theaters. I79 

built it, little regarding the expense, with all the im- 
provements that the older theaters lack. It is designed 
by the young tragedian for his home of the legitimate, 
especially the Shakspearean drama, and will, it is ex- 
pected, do much to resist the tendency of the time to 
merely sensational plays. 

Wallack's is, and has been for years, the best theater 
m the United States, and is quite as good as any in 
Europe outside of Paris. It is devoted almost entirely 
to comedy, and has no "stars," as that term is usually 
employed, but the most capable and best-trained com- 
pany that can be selected at home or abroad. 

Plays without any particular merit succeed, because 
they are so carefully put upon the stage, so fitly cos- 
tumed and so conscientiously enacted. It is more after 
the style of the French theaters than any other in the 
country. The old stage traditions and time-honored 
conventionalisms are given up there. Mouthing, rant- 
ing, and attitudinizing are not in vogue ; and men and 
women appear and act as such, and represent art in- 
stead of artificiality. 

It is commonly said that New- York goes to Wal- 
lack^s; and so it does more than to any other place of 
amusement. But lovers of good acting from every 
section usually avail themselves of a sojourn in the 
city to witness the artistic representations at that 
theater. 

The Winter Garden, burned more than a year and a 
half ago, has not been, nor will it be rebuilt. It has oc- 
cupied a very prominent place in the drama of New- 
1 ork. For its absurd name (given, perhaps, because 
there was nothing in or about the house to suggest 
either a garden or Winter,) it is indebted to Dion Bou- 



180 The Great Metropolis. 

cicault, who translated the title from the well-known 
Jardin d' Hiver in Paris. It was formerly Tripler hall ; 
then Boucicault's theater ; then Burton's ; then Laura 
Keene's ; and some years ago passed into the hands of 
William Stuart, a clever Irishman, at one time on the 
editorial staff of the Tribune^ and author of the famous 
but violent critiques on Forrest which appeared in that 
journal many years ago. 

At the time of its destruction, the theater was mainly 
owned by Edwin Booth, who, with some of the most 
famous artistes of the day, such as Forrest, Brooke, An- 
derson, Carlotte Cushman, and Jean Marie Davenport, 
made the place historic. After Wallack's, it was the 
best conducted theater in town, which seriously feels 
its loss. The star system was generally adopted 
and followed there ; and the extreme popularity of 
Booth caused his engagements to extend through the 
greater part of the regular season. 

Niblo's Garden, another of the inaptly named, is 
probably the oldest of the Broadway theaters. It was 
once a garden ; but it, as well as Niblo himself, disap- 
peared so long ago that the time when they were is for- 
gotten. It has had numerous managers, but none more 
prosperous than the present, Jarrett and Palmer. Their 
engagement of the Parisian ballet was particularly for- 
tunate for their exchequer ; for its success far exceeded 
the mo6t sanguine expectations. For seventeen 
months it crowded the theatre, the largest in Broad- 
way, every night, and realized to each of the mana- 
gers about $100,000. 

Classic tragedy and sparkling comedy are very well 
in their way ; but, when brought into competition with 
voluptuously-formed dancing girls, who seem to wear 



The Theaters. 181 

little else than satin slippers, witli a few rose-buds in 
their hair, the legitimate drama dwindles into insignifi- 
cance. What appeals to our intellect is entitled to 
our esteem. What appeals to our passions carries us 
bj assault. 

Niblo's is the coolest and handsomest theater, the 
Academy excepted, in the City, and, during the lavish 
display of saltatory nudity, was by long odds the most 
popular. 

The Olympic was built by Laura Keene ; was after- 
ward very successful under Mrs. John Wood, and has 
done well since, under varied management. It ranks 
fourth among New- York theaters, but is not at present 
distinguished for anything in particular. 

The New- York has catered to the lighter tastes 
of the public, and with a remunerative result. This 
theater is very small, was formerly Dr. Osgood's 
church, and was opened by Lucy Rushton, who had 
an ample physique, but no discernible dramatic talent. 
and failed because mere avoirdupois was not moneta- 
rily magnetic in Manhattan. 

The Theatre Fran^ais, in Fourteenth street, was, as 
its name implies, designed for Juignet & Drivet's 
French comedians; but it was not prosperous with 
them. It was opened year before last with an English 
opera company, who did so well that its members fell 
to quarreling, and disbanded in the midst of a season. 
Ristori made her triumphs there ; and of late devoted 
to opera boufPe, it has been very successful. 

The Broadway is Wallack's old theater, and is one 
of the most inconvenient in the city. Maggie Mitchell, 
Heckett, John E. Owens, and Barney Williams and 
his wife often play very successful engagements there. 



182 The Great Metropolis. 

George Wood disposed of the Broadway some time 
ago to Barney Williams, its present lessee and 
manager. 

The notorious old Bowery, once the temple of the 
legitimate has long been surrendered to the blue fire 
and bowl and dagger drama. The New Bowery was 
burned a year ago, and will not be rebuilt. The 
Stadt is a large, barn-like house, where the Germans 
applaud Schiller and Kotzebue over lager and Lim- 
berger. 

It is needless to refer to the Bowery, for its reputa- 
tion and peculiar school of acting have become na- 
tional. It still preseiwes its fame ; and sanguinary 
bandits and desperate assassins die to fast poison and 
slow music over and over again, to the delectation of 
newsboys and the enthusiastic peanut-lovers of the 
East side. 

Dawison played his remarkable parts at the Stadt, 
and drew such audiences as the theater very rarely at- 
tracts. It has all the appearance of a continental 
theater, and it is with difficulty, when inside of it, that 
one resists the impression that he is in Berlin or Vien- 
na once more. 

Wood's Museum and Metropolitan Theater is fur- 
ther up town than any other, being at the corner of 
Broadway and Thirtieth street. When it first opened 
with a ballet troupe it did well, but was ill managed, 
and failed. George Wood, formerly of the Broadway, 
leased it, and with a burlesque English singing com- 
pany, in which Lydia Thompson and other actresses, 
more comely than modest, are conspicuous, — ^lie is filling 
the house nightly. 

There are other theaters and numerous halls in the 



The Theaters. 183 

city where theatrical entertainments are given ; but 
those named are the principal, and convey an idea of the 
drama as represented and supported in the Metropolis. 

The defects of the City theaters are their general 
discomfort and lack of ventilation. Nearly all of them 
are so close and hot, when crowded, that enjoyment 
of the performance is marred, if not destroyed, by 
difliculty of wholesome respiration. Especially is this 
so when the weather is at all warm ; and that a hun- 
dred women do not faint nightly, suggests that femi- 
nine swooning, is to a certain extent, a matter of elec- 
tion and predetermination. 

The nominal price of admission is seventy-five cents ; 
but for secured seats, or in other words any seats at all, 
3'ou pay a dollar and a dollar and a half; and are for- 
tunate, should there be any special attraction, if you 
are not compelled to buy tickets of speculators at a 
very considerable advance on the regular rate. The 
speculators are a nuisance, which the manager assumes 
to oppose ; but he is often suspected of being in 
league with them, and dividing the profits of extra 
charges. 

Theatrical people are peculiar and much misunder- 
stood. Their life is very laborious ; and jet it has 
fascinations few members of the profession are able to 
withstand. They are strangely misrepresented, and to 
their disadvantage, by those who know nothing of them 
but by the excesses or dissipations of a few and the 
scandalous stories told of dead celebrities. They 
work very hard generally, but are much better paid 
than they used to be. Subordinate actors and actress- 
es receive $20 and $25 a week ; the leading men and 
women $75; soubrettes $50, and the ballet srirls, as 



184 The Great Metropolis. 

they are called, $8 to $10. Many of them support 
aged and infirm parents and relatives; make daily 
sacrifices for love and duty ; are heroic in a humble 
way as few outside of the profession are capable of 
believing. They live two lives. The life of the stage 
is quite apart from the practical one, and often as real 
as that which demands food and raiment. They for- 
get many of their troubles and hardships before the 
footlights, which are to them the radiance of their 
ideal world. They are made peculiar by their mimic 
being ; but once entered upon a theatrical career, they 
follow it through every variation of circumstance, and 
cleave to it with an earnest interest and perfect sym- 
pathy that ought to insure them the independence they 
seldom gain. Their trials are many, their temptations 
strong ; and yet there is often such beauty in the lives 
of the humblest, that a narrative of facts would somid 
like a romance. They are very migratory except at 
two or three of our City theaters ; playing here this season 
and next season in New-Orleans, San-Francisco, or 
Montreal. Good actors are always in demand; but 
there is such a difference of opinion respecting merit, 
so much in circumstance, that they who strive hardest 
and are most deserving not seldom subsist from 
hand to mouth, and become such wanderers they 
never know the sense of rest, the satisfaction of inde- 
pendence, or the sweetness of home. He who casts 
stones at them knows them not, and forgets what 
pleasure they have given him when life looked fair and 
the heart was young. 

The narrowness of the managers is shown in their 
unwillingness to engage actors or actresses who have 
not made their reputation in New- York, pretending 



The Theaters. 185 

that their success in " the provinces" is not based upon 
ability, and that they would fail when exposed to the 
severe test of metropolitan criticism. Some of the 
artists who cannot get engagements are better than 
those who have won laurels in New- York ; and not a 
few who have struggled for years to make an appearance 
in the City have, when the opportunity was afforded, 
taken the town by storm. 

Eliza Logan, Matilda Heron and John E. Owens are 
instances of this. James E. Murdoch, for years the 
best genteel comedian in the country, could never, if 
my memory serve, obtain an engagement here, because 
he was deemed a western actor. 

The people of New- York generally know about as 
much of the great West as they do of the Siberian 
steppes, and are somewhat surprised when they hear 
that the citizens of Chicago and Cincinnati wear 
gloves, and use napkins at table. It is not improbable 
that the Gothamites will increase their knowledge be- 
fore the century is over and learn that the "provincial- 
ists" in some things are equal to the self-sufficient 
"metropolitans." 



CHAPTER XIX. 
THE "DEAD-BEATS." 

"Dead-beat," tliough by no means elegant, is rath- 
er an expressive term, probably of English origin, 
meaning entirely spent, exhausted, broken down, 
bankrupt, and finds its synonym in our slang Amer- 
icanism, "played out." "Dead-beats" are hardly 
natural to the soil and surroundings of the Republic, 
and must have been primarily an importation. But, 
once transplanted, they flourish and multiply here as 
they could not abroad; for nowhere else could or 
would they receive such sustenance and encourage- 
ment. 

New-York abounds in dead-beats. They arc found 
in every profession and calling, in every kind of so- 
ciety, in all manner of disguises. No set is so exclu- 
sive, no vocation so earnest, that the dead-beat does 
not enter it. He is irreverent, obstinate, audacious. 
He rushes in where angels fear to tread. While Ca- 
pacity, combined with Modesty, holds back and blush- 
es with diffidence, Self-x\ssertion and Impudence, 
which are the heart and brain of dead-beatism, crowd 
forward and steal the prize. 

The eminent dead-beat is he who is n^t found out; 
who half imposes upon himself as well as others ; who 
has come to believe, at least partially that he is what 



The "Dead Beats." 187 

he has so long pretended. The pulpit, the bar, jour- 
nalism, art, the medical profession are full of such. 
But only the keen-eyed few perceive them. To the 
great mass they are the appointed oracles and the 
ministers of Fate. 

The Rev. Ambrose Arrowroot has an extended 
reputation for learning and for eloquence. Men laud 
and women languish for him. But he is only a plaus- 
ible hypocrite and fair-faced muff, that his biased con- 
gregation have dyed gorgeously with the crimson 
splash of their praise. 

Peter Pettifogger, Esq., brandishes green boughs 
of language, devoid of strength and sap, before judg- 
es and juries, until fatigue disarms criticism. He har- 
rangues crowds with noise and egotism, and they 
accept him as a new Chrysostom. 

George Washington Jones writes columns of pre- 
sumptuous verbiage year after year, until he proves 
the public a great ass, and is enrolled on the list of 
cotemporaneous fame. 

Angelo Smith, designed for a sign-painter, executes 
marvels of bad taste on canvas, and calls them art. 
Sciolists echo him ; fill his purse with sequins, and his 
little soul with conceit. 

Dr. Machaon Mercury kills people in the dark, and 
prates of science. A quack and charlatan, he looks 
solemn and sapient, and his patients gain confidence. 
Nature heals them, and they praise and pay the pomp- 
ous trickster. 

Such dead-beats require elaborate treatment. To 
expose them would be to shatter our idols, to transfix 
many of our dearest friends. We prefer those of a 
lower grade, who know what they are; who have 



188 The Great Metropolis. 

developed backward; who, having ceased to cheat 
themselves have resolved to cheat the World. 

The adventurers, the Jeremy Diddlers, the fellows 
who live by their wits, are the ordinary representa- 
tives of the class whose highest career is on the island 
of Manhattan. These are the ultra Bohemians, in the 
worst sense of the word ; the men of defective organ- 
ization ; the preyers upon the good nature and faith 
of their own kind; the persons who hold that the 
World owes them a living, whether they strive to earn 
it or not. Work is vulgar to them ; deceit, and false- 
hood, and knavery commendable, or at least excusable 
on the ground of the inequality of fortune. All men 
deserve alike in their creed; and they who are defraud- 
ed of their birthright are privileged to get from 
others what has been denied to them. 

No doubt there are thousands or people here who 
rise in the morning without knowing where or how 
they will get their breakfast or dinner, or where they 
will lay their heads at night. Most of those would 
work if they had the chance ; but a large proportion 
would not so demean themselves while a livelihood is 
to be obtained by social stratagem or unblushing im- 
posture. 

The genuine dead-beat exists by falsehood and by 
borrowing. He is an artist in his way ; intelligent, 
observing, with a knowledge of human nature and an 
insight into character. At the first glance, after he 
has had sufficient experience, he knows his victim ; 
determines how much victim can spare; understands 
the mode of reaching victim's sympathies. As suc- 
cess after success crowns the adventurer's effi^rts, he 
feels a pride in his power and tact, and regards get- 



The ^'Dead-Beats." 18y 

ting money out of a man very much as a general does 
an advantage over the enemy, or a libertine the con- 
quest of a woman. He comes to consider his calling 
as legitimate as any other. He earns his fee by his 
adroitness, as a lawyer by his argument, a physician by 
his diagnosis, an author by his last volume. 

Dull, plodding men are disposed to be honest. They 
have not the temperament or the resources needful to 
an adventurer's status. If unprincipled enough to 
adopt the profession, they could not prosper in it. 
They lack the appliances, the expedients — are inca- 
pable of making the combination and arranging the 
plan of attack. 

Something akin to genius is required for the avoca- 
tion — a union of valuable qualities that would yield 
profit if properly directed. The dea;d-beat is almost 
always a person of decided capacity, with something 
omitted in his mental or moral composition, or against 
whom the tide of circumstances has too strongly set. 

Beau Brummel was a clever specimen of an accom- 
plished dead-beat ; Beau Hickman is a poor example 
of the lowest form. Capt. Wragge, in Wilkie Col- 
lins's "No Name," united the talents and the virtues 
of his profession. 

The dead-beat cannot complain of monotony in his 
life. His variations and contrasts are like those of a 
woman's temper. In the morning he flushes with 
hope ; in the evening he pales with disappointment. 
But he never surrenders hope, which is his spiritual 
pabulum. His exterior undergoes striking changes. 
You meet him smartly dressed to-day. Next week he 
looks shabby as a resident of Mackerelville. At this 
moment he is lavish of money. When next you meet 



190 The Great Metropolis. 

him, lie is penniless as the old-time printer used to be 
on Monday morning. At times he is unpleasantly 
tipsy ; at others he is somberly sober. All conditions 
and moods join in him. The August sun and Decem- 
ber frost dwell together in his being. 

The dead-beat is usually the embodiment of good 
nature, polite, and desirous to conciliate every one. 
He cannot afford to offend the humblest member of 
the community on which he subsists. His list of 
acquaintances is interminable. He recognizes and 
remembers you at once. He thinks he has met you 
at a great many places where you have never been ; 
but at last fixes upon some fact of your life, and pur- 
sues you with it. 

He has the highest opinion of you, and so informs 
you. He flatters you grossly or delicately, according 
to your appetite. He discovers your foibles, your 
particularly weak spot, in a few minutes' talk. If you 
have lectured at Cooper Institute, or Chicago, or San 
Francisco, he recalls the occasion ; for it made a dis- 
tinct impression upon his mind. He was delighted, 
and he wonders, great as your reputation is, that you 
are not more fully appreciated. 

If you have written anything, he considers it, on 
the whole, the best thing of the kind he ever read. 
He is so observant that he bears in memory the young 
woman you last drove with in the Park. And, though 
tastes differ, he hazards the opinion she has more 
beauty, and elegance, and style than one usually finds, 
even in the best circles of society. He has often won- 
dered, with your capacity, and culture, and opportu- 
nity, you don't push your fortune. He scorns to 
flatter anybody ; he is a person of candor, even though 



The ''Dead-Beats." 191 

it give pain. But he shall always consider yon a man 
of great capacity, different from others — too original 
and sensitive, perhaps, to succeed, but with a deal of 
power — more deserving of fame than nine-tenths of the 
fellows who have schemed themselves into a name. 

After all that, you are more than human if you don't 
begin to believe there's something in D. B., though he 
does talk a great deal. And when he intimates a de- 
sire for a small loan, you grant it with alacrity, and 
feel the obligation is on your side. 

If you are a merchant, or a politician, or a muscular 
Christian, he will tell you of your skill in buying and 
selling, your understanding of the people, or your 
dexterity in the brutal art of bruising. He will lit his 
color to your sample, however rare the shade. 

The dead-beat, though you think you have seen 
him every day for a month, has always just been, or 
is just going, somewhere. A number of people are 
anxious for him to do this or that ; but he is in grave 
doubt. Jones has not money enough, and Robinson 
is hardly as liberal as he might be. And then what's 
the use of a fellow who is in demand constantly taking 
the first offer ? 

He invites you to drink, and discovers he has left 
his portemonnaie in his other coat. He asks you to call 
on families of position, but defers the visit if you 
accept. He relates his flirtations with the youngest 
daughter of the wealthy banker in Exchange-place ; 
and informs you confidentially of the row he had with 
old Sturgeon, because his young wife was so devoted 
to — he won't say who or what, but " you understand, 
old boy." 

The dead-beat haunts the hotels, the places of amuse- 



192 The Great Metropolis. 

ment, and the principal streets. He is ever on the 
alert for some dear friend — he has more friends than 
all the Veneerings — but will walk with you if you're 
not in haste. He has a singular faculty of meeting 
you about dinner or lunch time, and is forever leaving 
something at home. He is a regular barnacle. He 
won't be disturbed or shaken off. He sticketh closer 
than a brother, though you abuse him like a brother- 
in-law. His friendship for you is greater than that of 
Nisus for Euryalus, or Alexander for Hephsestion. He 
will talk, and drink, and eat, and sleep with you until 
he has borrowed your last dollar, and then advise you 
to be more careful of your means. 

These strange creatures are usually made what they 
are by evil passions, by indulgence in some vice. If 
they kept sober and didn't gamble, their pride would 
come to their aid, and give them strength to lead true 
lives. Their course is all downward. They frequently 
become bar-keepers, low blacklegs, runners for gam- 
bling houses, and even for bagnios. What we call sin, 
perpetually goes backward, tends below. Their career 
is brief and melancholy. If they do not die suddenly, 
they slip away and disappear in space. Probably they 
fly off from the great centre of the Metropolis, and 
revolve in the orbits of the country towns. 

I have known men of fine talents, with excellent 
opportunities and beginnings, fall to the under plane 
of dead-beatism ; and their career was thenceforth 
downward, until the coroner's inquest told all that was 
left of their history. 

Their first mistake was in endeavoring to obtain 
something for nothing ; in cherishing the delusion that 
the race of life was to be gained by standing still. 



The "Dead-Beats." 193 

They spent more than they earned. They borrowed, 
and borrowed, until they grew used to borrowing, 
and careless of payment. That was the dangerous 
step ; for they lost confidence in, and respect for, them- 
selves the moment they surrendered conscientiousness 
about debt. 

I remember a reformed beat who unfolded his ex- 
perience, which extended through five years. He 
"got behind" at faro, and borrowed to make up his 
loss. In a few weeks he had borrowed three thousand 
dollars ; pawned his watch and jewelry ; overdrawn 
his account in the office, with not a farthing in pros- 
pect. Then he began to drink to excess ; lost his sit- 
uation ; grew desperate ; borrowed of every one he 
saw ; gambled more ; prospered pecuniarily for a 
while, but discharged no old obligations. At that 
time, he was boarding at a first-class hotel ; could not 
pay his bill, running through six months ; was invited 
to leave ; stole off one night with his baggage ; went 
to another hotel, with same result ; then to private 
boarding-houses — fashionable ones at first ; mackerel- 
eating and coatless people at table, with soiled hands 
and unsavory odors, at the last. 

All his old acquaintances cut him ; father refused to 

help him ; besought strangers for small means ; got 

into the gutter ; the days and nights were hideous and 

confused like nightmare dreams. He gravitated to a 

gin-cellar in Water street, and received lodging and 

food to drug the liquor of predestined victims ; took 

money from the drawer ; was beaten half to death by 

the proprietor of the vile place ; sent to hospital, 

where delirium, added to his wounds, laid him at the 

door of death. For weeks he knew nothing ; but, as 
13 



194 The Great Metropolis. 

he recovered partially, familiar faces stole through his 
feverish dreams; familiar voices sounded in his ear. 
Better and better by degrees ; and one morning, wak- 
ing stronger than ever, he felt her kiss — the kiss of his 
mother — on his forehead ; and the face of the World 
was changed before that good, sweet, sympathetic face 
of man's first, and last, and best, and dearest friend. 

His fight with the ruffian had found its way into the 
newspapers. His mother, in a distant city, having 
seen the account, came to New-York, saved him, and 
returned him to a new life. 

■ To-day he is prosperous ; a happy husband and 
father ; and, better still, charitable to all who err or 
walk in the downward way. His advice never to 
borrow money, without paying it, is good, for debt is 
the beginning of dishonor. 

Money may be vulgar, but it is needful. So long 
as men are conscientious in the payment of the money 
they owe, they will be in the discharge of social and 
spiritual obligations. Who would be free, independ- 
ent, contented, should avoid debt. The debtor is en- 
slaved. Debt imposes a burthen upon him that pre- 
vents his walking upright and wholly honest in the 
light in which Peace is found. 



CHAPTER XX. 
THE ADVENTURESSES. 

To KNOW an adventuress, and to find her out, is al- 
ways a wound to tlie masculine self-love that is slow in 
healing. All men of the World who have traveled 
have met adventuresses, and have sometimes been de- 
ceived by the clever creatures, though their vanity 
may disincline them to such confession. 

What American that has lived abroad, or wandered 
there, but has met, in Paris, or Berlin, or St. Peters- 
burgh, at Biarritz, or Ems, or Wiesbaden, some artful 
and interesting woman, with a romantic history and a 
sentimental soul, who has drawn him into sympathy 
and love with her for at least a season ! Perhaps cir- 
cumstance has intervened between her and discovery, 
and her gallant has come home to think of the dark- 
eyed countess or the blonde baroness, who was impru- 
dent to be sure, but imprudent because she so wholly 
loved. 

"Ah!" sighs my bachelor friend, "Minawas a charm- 
ing creature ; and I have often thought it unwise not 
to have thrown her stupid Saxon husband overboard, 
that delightful night on the Adriatic. That might 
have changed my destiny. Poor, dear Mina ! I wonder 
where she is now. How devotedly she loved me! I 



196 The Great Metropolis. 

should be inhuman if I did not remember her with 
fondness." 

It is well for my friend's vanity he does not know 
where and how Mina is. Since he knew her, she has 
had many husbands and lovers, — the terms are synon- 
ymous with her, — and, if she could recall him, she 
would laugh at his folly, and declare, in her pretty 
German-French way, that men are very easily de- 
ceived. 

Most of our sex who know anything about women 
think they know all, and are disposed to believe them- 
selves interesting to any she they deem worthy of at- 
tention. Upon this knowledge of men, upon their 
weakness respecting women, adventuresses found their 
career. They attack men's purses through their vanity 
or passion, and are usually successful because of the 
feebleness of the point of attack. Very skillful spirit- 
ual anatomists are the members of the deceptions sister- 
hood. They soon find the available place, and carry 
the assault, less from strength without than weakness 
within. 

The larger the city, and the more cosmopolitan, the 
broader and better the field for feminine operations. 
And New- York, with its vast variety of people, its 
easy freedom and indifference to country conventional- 
isms, is a proper pasture for women of this sort. They 
are more numerous than is supposed in the Metropolis, 
which is their centre and radiating-point. They are 
drawn here by the attraction of numbers and wealth. 
They migrate to "the provinces" in times of dull- 
ness and adversity, and return when fortune promises 
fairer. 

The number of adventuresses in New- York can be 



The Adventuresses. 197 

reckoned no more than the number of dishonest men ; 
but they can be counted by hundreds if not thous- 
ands, for they are often seen where no one would 
suspect. 

The unfortunate creatures who pace Broadway after 
nightfall, anxious to sell themselves to whoever has the 
means of purchase, are adventuresses in their worst 
and most obnoxious form. But they are not of the 
class I mean; for they are driven by a terrible neces- 
sity, and lost thereby to every sense of shame. They 
are in the very shambles of the senses, and hold no 
masks before their wretched infamy. 

The adventuress, strictly such, earns all her success 
by seeming to be what she is not; by an adroit as- 
sumption of virtue she can hardly remember to have 
had. 

A walk up Broadway or Fifth avenue, a visit to the 
Academy during the opera season, a drive in the Park, 
a sojourn at the watering-places, during the Summer, 
will always reveal to the discriminating a number of 
full-blown, perfectly-developed adventuresses, who, to 
the many, are fine ladies and leaders of fashion. 

Theophrastus failed to mention the adventuress 
among his "Characters," for the reason that she be- 
longs more to the romantic tlmn the classic, the modern 
than the ancient school. She is peculiar, and not dis- 
cernible except to the practiced and below-the-surface- 
seeing eye. She is usually either young, or capable 
of making herself appear so — often near the middle 
age, but so fresh in semblance and agreeable in man- 
ners that she loses her years in proportion to one's ac- 
quaintance with her. If not positively pretty, she has 
a noticeable face, a graceful figure, excessive tact, and 



198 The Great Metropolis. 

knows how to use her tongue. What more, especially 
when it is remembered she has surrendered the incon- 
venient thing we call conscience, could or would a 
woman need to measure herself against the World she 
is resolved to cheat and profit by? 

The moral faculties are very essential to a well-bal- 
anced organization ; but they are sadly in the way of 
achievement sometimes, and the person that throws 
them overboard is the first to reach the port of pros- 
perity. 

Our heroine is self-poised, self-disciplined, incapable 
of being taken unawares or at disadvantage. She has 
strength and resources: she understands the power 
and efficiency of impudence and of inflexible deter- 
mination never to be put down. 

Some of her ethical and social tenets are : 

Believe every man a fool until he has proved him- 
self otherwise; and even then distmst his wisdom 
more than your power to deceive him in the end. 

Tell half-truths when there is fear of discovery; for 
half-truths disarm those that are whole. 

Always remember that a falsehood well adhered to 
is better than a truth poorly defended. 

Never trust a woman with what you would not have 
repeated. 

Bear constantly in mind that men are to be won and 
held through their senses and their vanity. When 
one is satisfied, stimulate the other. 

Never make confession. It is glorious to die at the 
stake, if you can perish with a lie on your lips. 

The adventuress seems to prosper. She is usually 
well and expensively dressed; has jewels and money; 
though in straitened circumstances, she seeks the 



The Adventuresses. 199 

pawnbroker, and secures advances from her mercenary 
uncle, — the last relative from whom we can obtain a 
loan. Her fortune varies like that of a gamester ; and 
she is as improvident. A true epicurean, she lives in 
to-day, and trusts Mercury for to-morrow. She thinks 
Destiny will care for those who care not for them- 
selves, and that the fabled Devil never abandons his 
own. No doubt she suffers dreadfully at times; but 
she looks cheerful ; and, when anxiety wears her 
pale, she lays on the rouge, and devises new schemes 
to ensnare. 

Our large hotels furnish the best sojourning-places 
for adventuresses, who can always be seen there. 
Those women do not stay long in one house usually; 
for they are unwilling to be too conspicuous or well 
known. They go from the Astor to the St. Nicholas, 
from the St. Nicholas to the Metropolitan, from the 
Metropolitan to the Fifth Avenue, and in turn to the 
Clarendon, Brevoort, Everett, Union-Place and West- 
minster — wherever men and money are to be found. 
By way of episode, they enter the fashionable board- 
ing-houses; but the field is narrow there, and the es- 
pionage and gossip of their own sex is not to their 
liking. 

They are often the most attractive women at the 
public houses. They know how to dress, and they 
have good manners. There is nothing rustic, or awk- 
ward, or disagreeably bashful about them, albeit they 
appear too easy sometimes for good-breeding and too 
free for entire modesty. They elicit your attention at 
breakfast and dinner ; assume graceful and picturesque 
positions in the drawing-room; let you overhear a 
piquant phrase as if by accident ; and make you be- 



200 The Great Metropolis. 

lieve, if you are vain, that they feel an interest in yon, 
by certain half-averted glances and stealthy looks. 

The adventuress is almost always alone, unless she 
is accompanied by a child, too small to be troublesome 
and too young to be observant, which gives her an 
air of respectability, and surrounds her with the sanc- 
tity of maternity. She is ever waiting for somebody, 
or going somewhere, or expecting something. She 
has expectations from the future, which the future is 
slow to redeem. She never lives in New- York, nor 
do any of her relatives. They dwell hundreds of miles 
distant, for some mysterious reason ; sometimes in New- 
England, sometimes in the West, sometimes in the 
South ; and are very difficult to hear from. They are 
persons of culture and position, and particularly at- 
tached to their kinswoman, — rather narrow and puri- 
tanical, perhaps, but amiable and affectionate to her 
broader self 

The adventuress is generally a widow, but some- 
times a wife, (never a maid, either actually or by as- 
sumption), the history of whose husband, living or 
dead, is circumstantially narrated. When her husband 
is with her, he is said to be a very jealous and excita- 
ble, even dangerous man, who displays extraordinary 
capacities for being absent when he is not wanted, — 
quite unusual, I have heard, in husbands of a less dubi- 
ous character. It is recorded, however, that he does 
make his appearance most inopportunely, and that his 
wrath is so great at unavoidable discoveries that it can 
be mollified only by liberal disbursements of private 
exchequer. He insists on blood at first ; but finally 
compromises on lucre, — informing the wounder of his 
honor that such a thing must not happen again. 



I 



The Adventuresses. 201 

Since tlie War, widows have been more abundant 
than ever. They have lost their husbands in the strug- 
gle, sometimes on the side of the North, but usually on 
the side of the South. They hail from Charleston, and 
Savannah, and Mobile, and New-Orleans, frequently 
from the interior, and they are waiting for the release 
of their estates. They have been to Washington, and 
have friends there looking after their interests. They 
have suffered a great deal in various ways, especially 
from poverty; but they will soon be in affluent cir- 
cumstances again. 

War-widows are to be regarded with suspicion, par- 
ticularly when from the South, and possessed of confis- 
cated plantations; for their kisses sting like adders, 
and their hands are greedy of gold. Victims of such 
may be reckoned by the hundreds. Hotel-proprietors, 
as well as hotel-guests, have discovered that invest- 
ments through sympathy are unproductive, and that 
cotton is not king, but the queen of deception oft- 
times. 

Year before last the crop of Southern widows was 
superabundant; and mine host was so often cajoled by 
them that, if they failed to pay their board promptly 
at the end of the week, he gave them full permission 
to go elsewhere. They went from the Stevens House 
to the St. James, pausing at all intermediate places be- 
cause of the lamentable condition of public confidence. 
Their baggage and wardrobes were seized, and they 
would have been turned into the street had not men 
been found who had faith and folly. 

Examples of interesting poverty are not unfrequent 
among adventuresses. They make the acquaintance 
of some kind-hearted man, and inform him of their 



202 The Giii^AX xUltropolis. 

straitened circumstances. They have failed to receive 
remittances, and can not pay necessary bills. If he 
can lend them a certain sum, they will return it in a 
few days. They show letters to substantiate their state- 
ments. He lends and obtains payment, if at all, in 
coin more tender than legal, and the loan is increased, 
and a liberal relation of debtor and creditor established. 
Sometimes the woman declines to receive money 
unless the lender will take her watch and jewelry as 
pledges for payment. But what man of gallantry in 
America can do that ? He naturally grows indignant, 
and inquires if he looks like a pawnbroker. She has 
made no blunder. She was as well assured by her 
knowledge of character that he Avould not receive her 
trinkets as that she would receive his money. She 
converts herself into a charming fountain at this junc- 
ture ; and the more he seeks to turn off the water, the 
more brilliantly it plays. 

Those eloquent tears have quite overcome him. He 
consoles her sentimentally, and her debts are his — un- 
til he finds her out. 

When lovers and money become scarce, the adven- 
turess frequently sends suggestive advertisements to 
the Herald^ or answers some she finds there, in which 
''young and handsome," "comforts of a home," 
"agreeable companion," "with a view to matrimony," 
are the alluring baits. She often rents houses, and 
takes lodgers or boarders, and lays siege to one 
after the other, until their purses are no longer availa- 
ble. She agrees to accept a situation in a private 
family as teacher; to do copying; to transcribe ac- 
counts ; to assist in literary labors ; soliciting or granting 
interviews that terminate in almost anything else. 



The Adventuresses. 203 

Adventuresses travel on the cars and steamers run- 
ning out of New- York in the capacity of "unprotected 
females," and soon make friends whom they convert 
into remunerative lovers. They tell marvelous stories 
(what man could ever tell a story like a woman, so 
plausible, so interesting, so delicately flattering, so de- 
liciously false?) veined with seeming ingenuousness 
and hued with sentiment. 

Men listen, anci. believe, and succumb ; for their van- 
ity prompts them to believe, and passion dulls their 
reason. 

The loudest logic is unheard before the small voice 
of desire, and the strongest resolution melts beneath 
the softest kiss. 

Not a few or our adventuresses maks annual pilgrim- 
ages to the watering-places and Washington,' where 
they reap a better harvest even than in New- York. 

At the national capital they have always beun a 
power; for there intrigue is at a premium, and well- 
managed incontinence in women more potent than 
principle, more effective than zeal. 

What men will not do for truth, for patriotism, for 
justice, for plighted word, they will for the fascinations 
of a petticoat and the follies of a night. 

At the Summer resorts, the adventuresses give zest 
to the commonplace flirtations, and lend a dash to the 
monotony of life there, that is long remembered by 
coxcombs who plume themselves upon the prodigious 
conquests they have made. Such fellows would be 
mortified, indeed, if they knew of their predecessors 
in pleasure. But they don't ; and it is well they are 
less wicked and more foolish than they suppose. 

Unnatural, unwomanly, repulsive as is the life of an 



204 The Great Metropolis. 

adventurebs, she appears to enjoy it; and she does (for 
we all justify, soon or late, our conduct to ourselves;) 
but she has days and experiences that are dark . d 
bitter to bear, and the storms of her being break upon 
her unseen heart. Hardened and selfish as her caree? 
renders her, she retains possibilities of good, and dread 
of evil when it takes new form; is capable, after all 
her miserable make-believes and hideous deceptions, 
of generosity and sacrifice, even of disinterested affec- 
tion and beautiful devotion. 

With all her wanderings, and weaknesses, and errors, 
she has something of the angel left, and above the 
crumbled ruin, written in colors of light, may be read 
the word, Woman, stilh 



CHAPTER XXI. 
THE BOARDING-HOUSES. 

Life in boarding-liouses, especially in New- York, is 
as different from life in hotels as residence in the 
Fourth and Eighteenth wards. The better class of 
hotels are generally comfortable, often luxurious ; but 
boarding-houses, of any sort, call them by what en- 
ticing name you may, are never more than endurable, 
and rarely that. 

People seldom go to boarding-houses save from ne- 
cessity. Poverty, not choice, directs them thither ; 
and they stay there for the same reason so many men 
have remained in the territories — because they have 
not the means to come away. Boarding-house exist- 
ence is a doom and distress here. Men are born to it, 
and, through narrow circumstances, compelled to con 
tinue it when every instinct and taste revolt at it. 

Woe to the mortal obliged to drudge in the Great 
City through all the months of the year, and unable, 
toil as he may, to emancipate himself from the tyranny 
of boarding-houses. Like Ixion, he is bound to the 
ever-revolving wheel. Like Tantalus, he is promised 
satisfaction that never comes. Work at his business ; 
annoyance in his home — the only one he has — he vege- 
tates through existence, and dies at last consoled by 
the hope that in the next world boarding-houses are 
impossible. 



206 The Great Metropolis. 

Boarding-houses here include so many varieties that 
no social Agassiz could enumerate them. They extend 
all the way from the extensive establishment in Union 
square, where boarders must be specially recommended, 
to the sailors' staying-place, where robbery is a system 
and murder a variation. Generally, however, they 
may be divided into two great classes — those that as- 
pire to be genteel or fashionable, and those that do 
not. Having gone through the former, few persons 
would have energy or curiosity enough to continue 
their experience. They would conclude that the up- 
per strata contained all that is worth knowing, or that 
humanity is capable of bearing. 

The fashionable boarding-house is the characteristic, 
and, phenomenally considered, the interesting class 
which chiefly claims consideration. The boarding- 
house of such pretension is of fair and of promising 
exterior and in the best quarters of the City. But it 
is of the Dead Sea apple complexion ; and they who 
would not find ashes and bitterness must not go be- 
neath the surface. Fourth, Eighth, Tenth, Fourteenth 
and nearly all the cross streets, with such neighbor- 
hoods as Union, Madison and Stuyvesant squares, 
bloom with fashionable boarding-houses, to which men 
who work with their hands, and are incapable of pay- 
ing at least $12 or $15 a week, are inadmissible. 

They are usually kept by women who have made 
the business a study and an economy ; who have, by 
long experience, learned the expansive power of 
every dollar, and the fullest value of every fraction of 
postal currency, with the rare cheapness and advan- 
tage of pretension. 

Widows for the most part preside over the desti- 



The Boarding -Houses. 207 

nies of boarding houses, having been driven to that oc- 
cupation by stress of fortune. Whatever their original 
gentleness, generosity and womanliness, their perpet- 
ual struggle with life and the countless perplexities 
and anxieties of their situation, make them hard, selfish, 
sour and narrow. They see the sphere at only one 
angle, and that the most acute one. Their whole 
thought, and feeling, and aspiration is embraced in 
making both ends meet, — in solving the ignoble prob- 
lem, ''How shall Hive?" 

Any cosmopolite knows a boarding-house proprie- 
tress at a single glance. She has emanations that re- 
veal her at once, much as she varies in form. She is 
generally very thin and haggard, in worn and thread- 
bare attire, with a cold, yet nervous and anxious man- 
ner, as if all her blood and sympathy had gone out of 
her with the last payment of rent. Or she is large 
and fleshy, tawdry in dress, with high cheek-bones and 
high color, sharp, gimlet eyes, staring at every man as 
if he were a delinquent boarder, and at every woman 
as if she suspected her of an intrigue, and were de- 
termined to get at her secret. She is always looking 
for bargains in furniture, millinery and provisions, and 
vaguely expects that, when the World comes to an end, 
she will be able to buy it cheap, and have the only 
genteel boarding-house in either hemisphere. 

When you enter a tall, handsome brown-stone front, 
exactly like its next door neighbor, where the Wall 
street banker or Beaver street merchant resides in the 
midst of velvet carpets, ormolu clocks and classic 
bronzes, you cannot help but be surprised. The draw- 
ing rooms look dismal ; the furniture worn and scanty ; 
the stairways treacherous and untidy ; the walls soiled 



208 The Great METRoroLis. 

and of marvelous acoustic property. Nothing like 
comfort or content anywhere, but the opposite of what 
you mean when you talk of home. 

Probably you see a table set in the back parlor, and, 
if it be Winter, a feeble semblance of a fire, that must 
be dreadfully skeptical at times of its own existence ; 
for, like the lodger in the fourth story, it is always going 
out. Everything that meets your eye is thin and un- 
real, save the landlady, who weighs two hundred, and 
stands in hourly dread of her own appetite. Though 
by no means lovable, you cannot but admire the ex- 
treme slirewdness she manifests when you talk of be- 
coming a boarder. She drives you into every finan- 
cial corner, and gives you to understand you can ob- 
tain no advantage over her. You might as well try to 
buy treasury notes at a discount of Simon Israels in 
Chatham square, as make anything out of her. Her 
wdiole expression says, "Ive seen men like you before. 
I'm an unprotected woman ; but you can't impose 
upon me." 

She shows you through the rooms, and informs yoa 
of the genteel character of her boarders. She never 
takes any one that she doesn't know all about. She 
prefers nice people to common people, even if the 
latter have money. She has been well reared herself, 
and would have been wealthy still, if poor, dear Mr. 
Dobbs hadn't gone on the paper of his friends, 
and lost his entire fortune. (Dobbs I know personally. 
The only fortune he had was the ill-fortune of marry- 
ing the present Mrs. Dobbs. She led him such a 
crooked life that he took to brandy straight, and 
walked off" the dock one night in preference to walk- 
ing into his wife's bed-chamber.) 



The Boarding-Houses. 209 

She gives you a biographical account of all her 
boarders ; declares you ought to kuow them ; that 
you would be delighted with them ; that her house is 
like a home ; that she has frequently thought of giv- • 
ing up the business, but that her boarders wouldn't let 
her. Her young men, she believes, really love her, 
(no accounting for tastes, you remember, though your 
incredulity isn't great enough for that,) and would be 
quite inconsolable if she ever should give up. She 
ventures the opinion that they would marry if they 
couldn't board with her. 

You reflect which of the two evils will be the 
greater; conclude to enlist underthe petticoat-banner 
of Mrs. Dobbs ; and disregard matrimony and fresh 
butter fore verm ore. 

At the table, all the boarders meet. They are very 
punctual, having learned by familiar hunger that to 
him who has an appetite delays are dangerous, and, if 
often repeated, will be fatal. Boarding-house life en- 
forces punctuality, though it does not satisfy the palate. 
But what are the senses to the social virtues ? 

The boarding-house is fashionable. Pray bear that 
in mind, and let the fact console you for any short- 
comings in the larder or any peculiarities of the landlady. 

You have all the courses at dinner — soup, fish, pas- 
try and dessert — but scantily served, ill-cooked and 
uninviting, though on unexceptionable crockery and 
well-washed tablecloths. The meals are long drawn 
out, not because there is much to eat, but because the 
waiters are few and slow of motion. Dinner especially 
is a prolonged agony, in which a deal of commonplace 
talk is made to supply the precepts of Blot and the 
dainty abundance of Delmonico. 

14 



210 The Great Metropolis. 

If a new comer, you are introduced to Mr. Wiggle, 
salesman in Franklin street ; to Mr, Newcomb, a law 
student at Columbia college ; to Mr, Pritcbard, a re- 
porter on a morning paper ; Mr, and Mrs. Humdrum, 
newly married, wbo came from Hartford, and wbo still 
deem it necessary to make love to each other in pub- 
lic, because their instinct tells them they will soon cease 
to do so in private. Miss Ridgway, who gives music- 
lessons and sings sentimental songs over the tuneless 
piano in the front parlor, but who believes she must 
find a husband ere long, is presented and seeks to cap- 
tivate you with her milk-and-water eyes. Several 
others are there, but they are too insignificant to re- 
member, and too much occupied with getting some- 
thing to eat to waste opportunities in conversation. 

During the entire week — dinner is reserved for the 
flow of soul — you are interested to perceive how 
many words can be spoken without ideas, and what 
amount of giggle is required for every silly speech. 

The theaters, the opera, the newspapers, the gossip 
and the scandal of the town, interspersed with the re- 
port of the alarming price of provisions from Mrs. 
Dobbs, and wonderings how she shall get along, (evi- 
dently intended, from her oblique looks at Wiggle and 
Newcomb, to be understood personally,) are diluted 
and distilled through an hour or two of hunger waiting 
on appetite. 

Several of the masculine boarders tell their singular 
experiences of last night or last year, albeit you can- 
not see wherein they are singular, and are conse- 
quently considered stupid by the narrators from your 
bland expression of face. Miss Ridgway declares 
men are such deceivers ; that they now love every 



The Boarding-Houses. 211 

woman they meet ; that they have n^t a particle of 
heart; and that no girl can believe them now-a-days. 
By way of rejoinder, a Mr. Luffy, who is rejoicing over 
an incipient pair of mutton-chop whiskers, and who 
fancies he is like Don Giovanni because he has found 
favor in the eyes of the chamber-maid and the cook 
asserts with a loud laugh that life is played out ; that 
love's a nice thing to talk about in the country, but 
that it won't go down in New- York. 

Everything has an end and the dreary dinner is no 
exception. The boarders go to the parlor and talk 
more nonsense than at the table. Miss Ridgway asks 
Norma to hear her, and tells Robert she loves him, at 
the piano, though it is very doubtful whether Norma 
or Robert care anything about her. Some members 
of the company stroll out ; some fall asleep, and others 
seem to feel a real interest in each other. 

Humdrum sighs for billiards and departs in search of 
them ; while Luffy, profiting by the husband's absence, 
tries to be gallant to the wife, who draws away her 
hand, and tells the youth to his whiskers he is a fool. 
The disappointed Faublas blushes very red, and is so 
crestfallen that he seizes his hat, and, going down 
Broadway, consoles himself with a "pretty waiter girl" 
in the Louvre. He returns home at two in the morn- 
ing, with a bad hiccough — a general impression that 
"those d — d houses" are trying to crowd him off the 
sidewalk, and with a particular conviction that he'll 
break Mrs. Humdrum's heart for the rebuff she gave 
him. "Yes (hie)," he says to the unsympathetic 
lamp-post, with a wave of the hand, "when she longs 
(hie) for the shelter of these arms, I'll (hie) cast her off 
forever." 



21 '2 The Great Metropolis. 

Mrs. Humdrum, after the exodus of Luflfy, retires to 
her room in a high sUde of indignation; but opens 
her door to Mr. Hicks, her husband's employer, 
who has called to see her lord and master on par- 
ticular business; and, by way of showing her confi- 
dence in the gentleman, puts her head on his shoulder, 
and asks him if he thinks a woman can love two men 
at the same time. 

At 9 o'clock Mrs. Dobbs is left alone in the parlor 
with a Mr. Jones, one of the silent men at the table, 
who now finds his tongue, and vows he adores her with 
his whole soul. She leans upon his paletot, and says 
she likes him for his delicacy of feeling, (perhaps she 
would be glad to say the same of his appetite), and 
hopes he won't come home drunk any more. 

Jones' private history is, that he has no money, and 
is too dissipated to keep a situation. Largely in ar- 
rears for board, he pays court to the landlady, (at 
her age and weight, she considers the love-making com- 
plimentary, and as a kind of oif-set to his indebted- 
ness ;) occasionally borrowing five dollars of her, return- 
able in kisses savoring of tobacco and lager-bier. 

Miss Ridgway has two devoted admirers. One she 
receives in the afternoon, and the other in the evening ; 
giving them good reason to believe she worships both 
of them. Neither of them has proposed as yet ; but it 
is quite time they did. She would accept both, if she 
had no fear of the law against bigamy ; for she has 
solved the problem that seems to trouble Mrs. Hum- 
drum. 

Certain it is that Miss Ridgway, and Mrs. Dobbs, and 
Mrs. Humdrum are not prudent women; but they make 
up for any lack in that direction by saying extremely 



The Boarding-Houses. 213 

ill-natured things of their feminine acquaintances, who 
do not act half so badly as they. That is a woman's 
compensation, and should be accepted from the injus- 
tice with which it is made. 

Mrs. Dobbs has a great many boarding-houses on 
this island, and Miss Ridgway and Mrs. Humdrum are 
generally to be found there, though they are called by 
different names. 

Clojlia and Pulcheria board there too ; but they do 
not like it a whit. How can they help themselves? 
They are pretty, and good, and discreet; but Plutus 
answers not their prayers; and he above all other 
deities emanicipates mortals on the island of Manhat- 
tan. 

The refined, and generous, and hungry souls who 
are, from want of money, obliged to dwell in boarding- 
houses, are to be profoundly pitied; for your board-, 
ing-houses, even the best of them, are a wretched 
make-believe, and a social evil only the sufferers can 
completely understand. Persons who keep them, and 
through whom they are kept, deserve sympathy. 
Boarding-houses are unnatural, and the result of an 
over-crowded civilization. Every one must pity the 
man born with a soul above a boarding-house, who is 
still compelled to keep his body there, with an appe- 
tite he cannot appease, and through circumstances he 
cannot controL 



CHAPTER XXn. 
HORACE GREELEY. 

Horace Greeley is, in all probablity, the best known 
man in America. No remote corner of the Republic 
that has not heard of the editor-in-chief of the New- 
York Tribune. His name is repeated in Arkansas as 
an exorcism to mosquitoes, and even New Zealand is 
not unmindful of his fime. 

He has been written about more than any American 
of his time, and is a standing theme for gossips 
who indite letters from New-York. James Parton 
made his first fame by his biography of Greeley, which 
he has recently completed to the present time, and 
which, in revised form, has recently been issued from 
the press. 

Much as is known of Horace Greeley as a journalist, 
politician and reformer, he is little understood as a man. 
All sorts of tales are told of him, and, as he is ex- 
tremely eccentric, many of the most extravagant sto- 
ries are widely believed. His absent-mindedness is 
largely insisted on, and I have often heard it stated 
with gravity, that he keeps a boy in the Tribune, es- 
pecially to inform him, at a stated hour, whether he 
has eaten his dinner, and what his name was when he 
entered the office. 



Horace Greeley. 215 

Thos-e personally acquainted with Greeley are as 
much amused as he no doubt is, by the absurd gossip 
respecting him ; for they know that shrewdness and 
uncommon sense are among his most marked charac- 
teristics. 

Horace Greeley was born on the 3d of February, 
1811, in Amherst, N. H., of very poor, and, neces- 
sarily, therefore, very honest parents. Of his hard 
work on his father's sterile farm ; of his early precocity ; 
of his devouring of books when he was obliged to 
read by the light of pine knots ; of his apprenticeship 
— very unlike Wilhelm Meister's — to the printing 
business ; his severe struggle with fortune ; his wan- 
dering from one village paper to another, both his 
biographer and himself have told at length. 

He came to New-York in August, 1831, a pale, thin, 
awkward country boy, looking like Smike, and though 
over twenty, he seemed at least five years younger. 
I have often heard him described as he wandered up 
and down Nassau, William and Chatham streets, in his 
worn shoes and short trousers, his flimsy hat and thin, 
flaxen hair, all his worldly goods in a handkerchief at 
the end of a stick, thrown over his shoulder, seekinir 
for work, work at any price, and determined to get it ; 
believing then, as now, that in work and by work all 
things are accomplished. He had only $10 in his 
pocket ; but he had faith in his industry, his patience, 
his energy, and that faith was a fortune beyond cal- 
culation. 

For ten years he set type and wrote, connecting 
himself with various newspaper enterprises, and alwaj s 
failing, but never losing hope, until, on the 10th of 
April, 1841, he issued the first number of the New- 



216 The Great Metropolis. 

York Tribune^ himself selecting the name that has 
gi*own famous, and which, as a mere name for a truly 
democratic paper, has no equal in the World. The 
Tribwie was something new, and far in advance of any 
daily paper of that time in tone, breadth and force; its' 
key-note from the start being humanity, a fair chance 
for all men. I never realized how excellent a paper it 
was in the beginning until I looked over its early files ; 
and I can't help thinking that it was, considering the 
great advance in journalism since, much abler and 
more interesting in its first years than it is now. 

From the day he started the Tribune — the darling 
of his journalistic heart, to which no other darling is 
comparable — to the present time, its editor's career 
has been one of unflagging labor. One may well say 
of him what Clarendon said of Sir Walter Raleigh — 
he can toil dreadfully. He has a mania for work that 
persons of luxurious temperament can hardly compre- 
hend. I have often fancied that by such constant 
occupation men like him either work out any discon- 
tent and bitterness they may have, or so revenge Ihem- 
selves upon themselves lor the dissatisfactions oT life. 
The amount of work Greeley accomplishes every year 
is something incredible. He finds his chief happiness 
in work, as other men do in recreation. 

Every day that he is in the City — and he never 
leaves it except on urgent business, or to keep an en- 
gagement to speak or lecture — he writes at least two 
columns for the Tribune^ not to speak of his contribu- 
tions to various other publications, which, I presume, 
average six columns' space of his paper each week. 
He speaks and lectures fifty or sixty times a year, and 
makes, every month, a trip to Albany or Washington, 



Horace Greeley. 217 

to regulate, according to his own views, the afiitirs of 
the State or Nation. He writes, with his own hand, 
fifteen to twenty-five private letters a day ; pores over 
the papers like a man who is paid for it ; reads all the 
books of any note that come out, whether o*f philoso- 
phy, history, poetry or romance ; and sees more people 
on every conceivable and inconceivable business than 
any man on the island of Manhattan. 

When he was writing his "American Conflict," he 
found it necessary to conceal himself somewhere to 
prevent constant interruption. He accordingly took 
a room in the Bible House, where he worked from ten 
in the morning until five in the afternoon, and then 
appeared in the sanctum, seemingly as fresh and as 
anxious to write as if he had been on one of his theo- 
retical fishing expeditions for a number of weeks. 

When people use the stereotyped phrase "I want 
to see a man," I am sure the anonymous individual is 
Horace Greeley, who is certainly the most sought and 
inquired-after person in New-York. 

Beggars of all kinds, politicians of all schools, re- 
formers of all types, counsel-seekers of all degrees of 
weakness, are in perpetual pursuit of Horace Greeley. 
So much is this the case that, some months ago, his 
sanctum on the editorial floor was demolished, cind a 
den prepared for him in the impenetrable recesses in 
the vicinity of the counting-room. Some thousands, 
have attempted to find him there ; but as the last 
heard from them was a mingled groan and maledic- 
tion, amid the howling darkness of the press-room, 
it is believed they paid the penalty of their rash cu- 
riosity. 

Horace Greeley's home, to which he goes every- 



218 The Great Metropolis. 

Saturday, and where he spends twenty-four hours, ig 
at Chappaqua, on the Harlem Railway, about twenty- 
five or thirty miles from the City. He has a pleasant 
and highly cultivated farm there, of some forty acres, 
in which the eminent journalist has spent most of his 
earnings, and which will not pay him on the invest- 
ment, more than one cent on each one hundred dollars. 
With the return he is entirely satisfied, as he considers 
that his money has been devoted to the cause of agri- 
culture, one of H. G.'s favorite hobbies, and in which 
he has always taken the deepest interest. His farm is 
a fancy farm in the completest sense ; and those who 
ought to know say that every beet and turnip he raises 
is worth, so far as his outlay is concerned, twice its 
weight in gold. 

At Chappaqua he amuses himself by chopping wood 
— that is what he conceives to be recreation — and 
playing at digging ditches, with kindred light pleas- 
ures, while the daylight lasts. Sunday morning he 
returns to town, attends Dr. E. H. Chapin's (Univer- 
salist) Church, of which he is a member, and after the 
service bursts into his den down town, and for the 
next six hours makes diagrams of Boston in ink, and 
calls them editorials. 

Horace Greeley married in his youth a pretty and 
intelligent New-England girl, whom he found teaching 
school in North-Carolina, and by whom he has had 
three children. His boy, of whom he was passionately 
fond, and who was an extremely precocious and prom- 
ising child, died years ago, and has ever since been 
mourned by his father, with a grief that has hardly 
yet been comforted. His two daughters, Gabrielle 
and Ida, aged respectively nine and eighteen, are said 



Horace Greeley. 219 

to inherit much of their father's intellect and their 
mother's strength of character. 

The editor-in-chief of the Tribune has always been 
very charitable, and, until within a few years, was in 
the habit of giving money to whoever asked for it. 
It is said he has, as a miscellaneous alms-giver, parted 
with $50,000 to $60,000 since he started the journal 
of which he is naturally ambitious to be known as the 
founder. 

His personal appearance, carelessness of dress, (he 
is always neat, and has a Beethoven-like fondness for 
the bath,) passion for politics, vagaries of conduct, 
frequent irritability and alleged injustice to his friends, 
require no chronicling. He has all through life shown 
an unswerving devotion to principle, and, though by 
no means free from faults, this generation, and genera- 
tions to come, will do him the justice to say that no 
man of his time has done more for humanity, or to 
educate the people to a sense of right, than Horace 
Greeley. Like the naughty woman mentioned by 
Aretino, he is (according to his political opponents) 
always ruining himself; but each ruin seems to es- 
tablish him more firmly in the confidence of the peo- 
ple. They believe in his earnest endeavor to do right, 
and to lead where his understanding of truth directs 
him. Whatever his defects, he could not wisely ex- 
change his prospects for immortality with those of any 
man in America. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 
FIFTH AVE N UE. 

Of the fifteen or sixteen avenues of the City, Fifth 
is known as the Avenue by way of distinction. It is, 
by all odds, the most handsome and exclusive street 
of the Metropolis — the only one that has thus far re- 
sisted the encroachments of trade and railways, and 
defied the peculiar regulations of our municipal gov- 
ernment. Every few months an innovation is at- 
tempted upon the fashionable thoroughfare, which has 
too much strength, through its wealth, to submit to 
any vulgar alteration in its settled courses. 

Fifth avenue exclusiveness must be purchased at 
large prices ; for it always offers temptations to private 
speculators and corrupt legislators. It even prefers 
fashion to fortune, for the reason that it has more of 
the latter than the former, and it would rather be 
over-generous than under-genteel. 

"Let me alone; let me be as I want to," says the 
Avenue to outside barbarians, in nervous anxiety, its 
hand upon its purse, "and I will pay without stint the 
most exorbitant of demands." 

Street railways are the periodic terror of the Ave- 
nue. Though loud threats are made to put them 
there, there is little danger of their establishment ; for 
the prosperous quarter knows better than Walpole that 
few men fail to be convinced by monetary arguments. 



Fifth Avenue. 221 

Who has the most money wins in New- York, where the 
long as well as the short race is to the fullest purse. 

Whenever a house is for sale or rent in the Avenue, 
its residents feel a profound interest in the character of 
the inmates that are to be. They dread lest the man- 
sion may be converted to unworthy uses ; lest they 
may be hourly shocked by a plebeian neighbor who 
is what they themselves were twenty, or five years, or 
perhaps a few months before. Their vigilance is sleep- 
less in this regard, still they have often been com- 
pelled to buy out common tradesmen, and ambitious 
courtesans, and enterprising blacklegs, who had ])ut- 
chased an abiding place in the socially sacred vicinage. 
There have been those whom bank accounts and bank 
checks could not persuade. Madame Restell, the no- 
torious abortionist, and gamblers by the score, and 
Cyprians by the dozen, have penetrated into the street, 
and cannot be gotten rid of for largess or for logic. 

Yet the energy and munificence of the Avenue, 
in the endeavor to keep out the unanointed, is com- 
mendable from its stand-point, and in another direction, 
would be productive of no little good. 

It is a defect of our perception that we expend our 
strength against the current of events. 

It is the habit of New-Yorkers to style Fifth avenue 
the first street in America. So far as wealth, and ex- 
tent and uniformity and buildings go, it probably is. 
But in situation, it is far inferior to many thorough- 
fares I might name. Beginning at Washington square, 
it extends above Harlem ; and, far as Fifty-ninth street, 
it is almost an unbroken line of brown-stone palaces. 
The architecture is not only impressive, it is oppressive. 
Its great defect is in its monotony, which soon grows 



222 The Great Metropolis. 

tiresome. A variation, a contrast — something much 
less ornate or elaborate — would be a relief. Its lack 
of enclosures, of ground, of grass plats, of gardens is a 
visual vice. 

Block after block, mile upon mile, of the same lofty 
brown-stone, high-stoop, broad-staired fronts wearies 
the eye. It is like the perpetual red brick, with white 
steps and white door and window facings for which 
Philadelphia has become proverbial. 

One longs in the Avenue for more marble, more 
brick, more iron, more wood even — some change in 
the style and aspects of the sombre-seeming houses, 
whose occupants, one fancies from the exterior, look, 
think, dress and act alike. One might go, it appears, 
into any drawing-room between the Park and old Pa- 
rade-ground, and he would be greeted with the same 
forms ; see the same gestures ; hear the same speeches. 

The stately mansions give the impression that they 
have all dreamed the same dream of beauty the same 
night, and in the morning have found it realized ; so 
they frown sternly upon one another, for each has what 
the other wished, and should have had alone. 

The slavish spirit of imitation, with poverty of in- 
vention, has spoiled the broad thoroughfare where we 
should hav(^ ha<l the Moorish and Gothic, Ionic and Doric 
order, Egyplian weight with Italian lightness, Tudor 
strength with Elizabethan picturesqueness. 

It is a grievous pity that where there is so much 
money there is so little taste. 

The sum of Fifth avenue wealth is unquestionably 
far beyond that of any street in the country. The 
dwellings cost more ; the furniture and works of art are 
more expensive ; the incomes of the inmates are larger 



Fifth Avenue. 223 

and more prodigally spent than they are anywhere else 
on the Continent. 

The interior of the houses is often gorgeous. Noth- 
ing within money's purchase, but much that perfect 
taste would have suggested, seems omitted. Few of 
the mansions that do not reveal something like tawdri- 
ness in the excess of display. The outward eye is too 
much addressed. The profusion is a trifle barbaric. 
The subtle suggestions of complete elegance are not 
there. 

Still, to those who have suffered from the absence of 
material comfort, or to those whose temperaments are 
voluptuous and indolent, as most poetic ones are, a 
feeling akin to happiness must be born of the splendid 
surroundings that belong to the homes of the Fifth 
avenue rich. 

What soft velvet carpets are theirs ; what handsome 
pictures ; what rich curtains ; what charming frescoes ; 
what marbles of grace ; what bronzes of beauty ; what 
prodigality of prettiness! The soft, warm, yet fresh 
odor of luxury comes from every angle ; fills the cor- 
ridors, and the delightful chambers, where sleep seems 
to be hidden beneath the spotless pillows of lace, steals 
out of the half-open library, where hundreds of mo- 
rocco volumes stand silent with the treasures of time 
and mind in their keeping ; creeps up and down the 
stairways, like the breath of flowers blown by the 
gentle wind. 

Whatever the senses could ask, or culture require, 
or fancy crave, might be had in the walled paradise 
of those splendid homes. Dishes so delicate as to 
tempt the most surfeited appetite ; wines rich enough 
to woo an anchorite to their tasting ; music Mozart, 



224 ' The Great Metropolis. 

and Mendelssolm, and Beethoven to cheer and soften, 
to strengthen and console ; tomes of bards and sages 
to lift the thoughts to ideal possibilities — all these are^ 
to be found there. Fair harvests may be gathered 
every minute of the day or night ; and he who takes 
not up the golden sickle in the fragrant field, is more 
to be pitied than he who sighs for flowers in a sterile 
waste. 

Too sad for tears is the bitter fact that everything 
palls ; that the highest and best satisfies only for a 
time. They who live in the midst of such splendor 
grow so familiar with it that they value it not. They 
are spared a certain number of wants, but others are 
felt that may not be supplied. The spirit is not satis- 
fied with junketings ; the vacuities of the heart may 
not be filled with shows of pleasure or the tinsel of 
display. 

It is good to be rich ; but it is better to be con- 
tented. 

"Remove the banquet where Sympathy will not 
come," says every starving soul some time in its prog- 
ress, "and spread the humblest board where Love 
may sit." 

See that fair woman, robed like a queen — beauty in 
face and form, and grace in every motion. 

What has she to sigh for? What can she need, 
with wealth, and position, and friends, and a generous 
heart ? 

Nothing that she has ; everything that she has not. 
Her generous heart, that should have been her blessing, 
has proved her bane. Her husband is not her love, 
and never was. She is wife in name merely ; and to 
be such is to be accursed with seeming. She is mar- 



The Fifth Avenue. 22li 

ried, not wedded ; bound in law, though not in affec- 
tion. 

She obeyed Fashion's dictates, and Nature exacts 
the penalty. 

How she longs, in her splendid desolation, for the 
love of children that do not come for all her longing ! 
How she thrills in sleep with the kisses of the babe 
that kindly dreams send to her, and presses the airy 
cherub to her unnursed bosom ! The tender eyes 
open, and the happiness has gone. He sleeps heavily 
at her side, and she shrinks away from the dreaded 
touch that always wakes her like a shock. 

0, the woe of those whom Man has joined together, 
and God does not put asunder ! 

Tall and dignified is the handsome-looking man who 
sits abstracted at breakfast, over the morning paper, 
and whom the money-article does not even attract. 
His spouse seems cold, and his children distant, grouped 
at the oval table amid the silence of unsympathy that 
tells what words cannot. He has speculated, and 
traveled, and gratified such ambitions as most men 
have. But they are empty in this hour — the still, in- 
trospective, conscientious hour, which none of us can 
wholly escape. 

He remembers the landscape that he loved to look 
upon fifteen years before — the creeping river, and the 
distant village, whose spires winked through the twi- 
light; "and the lithe form that slipped away from his 
arms until it rested on the grass, and the little head 
lay still in sleep upon his lap. 

He remembers the coming out of the stars, and the 
bending down of kissing lips to the brown hair, and 
the walk homeward, when the milestones would not 

15 



226 The Great Metropolis. 

stay apart, and the struggle between the fascinations 
of the great city and the narrow life in the humble 
town, and the surrender of love to stronger lures. 

Alas, he left his happiness behind, and learned the 
truth too late ! 

It is with all of us as it is with him and her. We 
miss the way of life because human destiny is dark. 
We discover where our peace was when we can no 
longer grasp it. We ask for the beautiful vase we 
dashed to pieces in our petulant mood. We yearn for 
the impossible, and think it dearest because it is im- 
possible. 

Our hearts will not bear examination. Our experi- 
ences may not be told, for they are bitter, and teach 
nothing even to ourselves. 

Let the World spin down its grooves, and let us spin 
with it, and cry amen to others' prayers, and praise 
the shams that are put upon us every day of the 
year. 

Come out of the houses that are not homes. Come 
into the street — the crowded Avenue where life over- 
llows, and drowns disturbing thought. 

What a glitter of carriages ! How the well-groomed 
horses beat the pavement, hour after hour, all the 
way to the Park! Those men and those women 
daintily dressed, wreathed in smiles, are not like him 
and her we saw within those handsome walls. 

Oh ! no ; they have no skeletons in their gilded cab- 
inets. The festering wound is not behind those clus- 
tering gems. We none of us have woes to speak of 
to the many. But the stern angel Avho bears about 
the key of sympathy, unlocks velvet doors that lead to 
haunted chambers and to charnel vaults. 



The Fifth Avenue. 227 

The brown-stone fronts, with all their likeness, admit 
very different guests. 

The people who live side by side in the pretentious 
Avenue, know each other not. Knickerbocker and 
parvenu, the inheritor of wealth and the architect of 
his own fortune, the genuine gentleman and the vulgar 
snob, reside in the same block. , 

One house is visited by the best and most distin- 
guished ; the house adjoining, by men who talk loud 
in suicidal syntax, and women who wear holyhocks in 
their hair, and yellow dresses with pink trimmings. 
Here dwells an author whose works give him a large 
income ; over the way, a fellow who has a genius for 
money-getting, but who cannot solve the mysteries of 
spelling. 

Into this plain carriage steps a self-poised, low- 
voiced, sweet-faced woman, while, just opposite, a 
momentous "female" throws herself into anew lan- 
dau, and orders the coachman in showy livery, to drive 
to " Tiff'ny's right straight before all them di'monds 
is gone." 

On the sidewalk, Mrs. Merrit passes quietly; and 
her perfect air of good-breeding is not altered by the 
high tones of "Mrs. Colonel Tufthunter," who says to 
the honne at the door, ^'' Prend garde du ma infante 
jusque je revinsy 

At this the bonne, who chanced to be born in Paris 
instead of Dublin, looks blank, and replies in good 
French, which her mistress no more understands than 
did the maid her mistress' barbarisms. 

Some of the most spacious and expensive mansions 
in the Avenue always have a deserted look. Only the 
occupants and servants appear on the high, carved 



228 The Great Metropolis. 

stoop ; only the carriages the master of the establish^ 
ment owns, stop before the door. 

That family purchased a house in the Avenue, but 
Society has not accepted its members. They have 
nothing but a new fortune to recommend them. They 
must bide their time. 

The first generation of the unrecognized fares hard. 
The second is educated, and the third claims lineage ; 
prates of "gentility," and frowns upon what its grand- 
parents were. 

To get into the Avenue, and into its Society, are 
different things. 

They who struggle to enter certain circles are not 
wanted. Those who are indifferent to mere fashion are 
in request ; for not to seek, socially, is usually to be 
sought. Destiny appears willing always to grant what 
we do not want, and determined to withhold what we 
do. 

Very many of these houses have histories that would 
furnish abundant themes for the old-fashioned, three- 
volume English novel. Every day that passes within 
them would supply comedy and tragedy, one or both, 
if they who know would tell. One meets there, any 
time, women looking so pure their faces would almost 
contradict facts, yet part of their lives, if revealed, 
would repel their dearest friends. Those women are 
good and bad, as we understand the terms. Their 
faults would shock, and their virtues win us. With 
our foot we might spurn ; with our hand we should 
caress. 

Men we encounter in the Avenue have the angel 
and devil commingled in their being. They are 
neither so faulty nor so faultless as is believed. They 



The Fifth Avenue. 229 

are half divine, yet wholly human. They represent 
the World. Circumstance drives, Temperament binds 
them. 

Fifth avenue has its shams, and follies, and evils. 
But go there or elsewhere, and, when we have pon- 
dered deeply enough, we shall see that Charity ends 
what Sympathy begins. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 
HENRY J. RAYMOND. 

Henry Jarvis Raymond was born in this State, in 
the httle town of Lima, on the 24th of January, 1820; 
his father being a small farmer, whom Henry assisted 
in the field while a mere boy. He is said to have 
been a very hard worker for a little fellow. He hoed 
potatoes and planted corn like a veteran, and riding 
horses and driving cows were his favorite recreations. 

He very early manifested a fondness for reading, and 
before he was eleven years of age had consumed all 
the books within a radius of ten miles of his father's 
home. Henry attended the Academy of his native 
village, and in his fifteenth year taught in the District 
school. After continuing in that capacity for eighteen 
or twenty months, he went to the University of Ver- 
mont, and graduated in 1840. Very soon after, he 
came to this City and began the study of law, support- 
ing himself in the meantime by teaching a select school 
for young ladies, and by writing for a weekly literary 
paper known as the New- Yorker. In his first teens he 
had shown an aptitude and passion for writing ; and while 
at the Academy and while teaching school in the coun- 
try he composed verses and plays of a very superior 
order for one of his years. A remarkable versatility 
was his even then; and it was observed that he could 



Henry J. Raymond. 231 

take almost any view of a subject and write on it with 
facility and apparent earnestness. In the debating 
societies, too, to which he belonged, he could espouse 
the affirmative or negative of a question, and support 
one as ably as the other. Sometimes — so runs the 
rumor — he would become confused in his arguments, 
and leave his hearers at the end of his speeches very 
much in doubt which side he was on. 

The more Raymond learned of law the less he seem- 
ed to like it, and the more he wrote for publication the 
fonder he became of it. A few years in a law office 
made him conclude journalism was his forte, and when 
Horace Greeley established the Tribune., Raymond went 
into the office as associate editor at the princely price 
of $8 a week, working on an average about thirteen or 
fourteen hours a day. H. G., who is a perfect fanatic 
concerning labor, and who thinks that a man only or- 
dinarily industrious is a mere drone, actually urged 
Rayniond not to work so much ; and he is the only 
person the editor-in-chief of the Tribune has ever found 
it necessary to remonstrate with on that account. 

Raymond was a capital reporter, and distinguished 
himself in that branch of journalism, at a time, too, 
when reporting was a rare art. 

He served two years on the Tribune., and then con- 
nected himself with the Courier and Enquirei% where 
he continued for several years. In 1847 he became a 
book-reader for the Harpers, doing also different kinds 
of literary work, and remained with them ten or twelve 
years. During his connection with the Courier and 
Enquirer he had a controversy on socialism with 
Horace Greeley (the latter defending, and Raymond 
attacking, it) which was carried on with zeal and abil- 



232 The Grcat Metropolis. 

ity on both sides, and attracted a great deal of public- 
attention. 

In 1849 he was elected to the State Legislature by 
the Whigs, and was very conspicuous in debate, for 
which he had unquestionable talent. The peculiarity 
of his school days was repeated in public life. He 
seemed by the force of his own argument, to convince 
himself of the truth of the opposite side from that he 
espoused. He was re-elected after his term had ex- 
pired, and having twice served the State he went 
abroad for his health, which had become delicate, and 
remained a year. In 1854 he was chosen Lieutenant 
Governor of the State, and was very recently sent to 
Congress. He is now out of politics so far as the fill- 
ing of offices is concerned, and he is reported to have 
said that he will keep out, having learned at last that 
a newspaper requires all a man's time, and that the 
profession of a journalist is the highest and most influ- 
ential of any in the land. 

September 8, 1851, the first number of the Times^ 
which had been for a long while in contemplation, was 
issued — Raymond upon it as editor-in-chief — and it is 
said he had over twelve columns of his matter in the 
initial issue. The Times was published at first for a 
cent and afterwards increased to two cents. It was 
well received from the start, though $90,000 were sunk 
in the concern before it began to make any return. Of 
late years it has grown quite profitable, and though its 
circulation varies considerably its regular profits are 
about $80,000 per annum. 

Raymond is a very fluent and easy writer, and it 
has often been stated in the office that if the days were 
a little longer he would write up the whole paper. 



Henry J. Raymond. 233 

Paragraphs, reviews, dramatic and musical criticisms, 
sketches, general editorials, political leaders, all are 
alike to him. He is, no doubt, the most versatile 
writer on the New- York press. One of his most re- 
markable performances was his article on the death of 
Daniel Webster. It filled nearly fifteen columns of the 
Times j was written at one sitting, and in the incredi- 
bly short space of twelve hours. 

Almost every one remembers the article which ap- 
peared in the Times^ some years ago, in which "the 
elbows of the Mincio," "the sweet sympathies of youth" 
and other incoherent phrases were strangely blended, 
making a mass of ridiculous confusion that gave it the 
title of "the drunken editorial." As it was printed 
while Raymond was in Europe, and after he had fig- 
ured prominently as an energetic fugitive at Solferino, 
the Herald and other papers charged its authorship 
upon him. He never knew anything about it until he 
came home ; and then learned the entire history of the 
article, which is as follows : 

One of the staff, a clever but erratic fellow, now on 
the World^ was in the habit of dining out, and drink- 
ing so freely at times that when he came to the office 
at a late hour his MS. was very uncertain. Conse- 
quently the foreman had orders to look closely at Mr. 

's copy, and see if it were safe. If not, to leave 

it out. On the eventful night the eccentric personage 
came in, flushed with wine, but sat down and wrote a 
few "takes" very clearly and intelligibly. The regu- 
lar foreman examined the first part, pronounced it "all 
right," told his foreman to follow copy, and went 
home. 

The heat of the room very soon acted upon the 



234 The Great Metropolis. 

journalist, who mixed up his rhetoric alarmingly. The 
assistant obeyed orders literally, no doubt relishing the 
heterogeneous editorial, through that passion for wag- 
gery so characteristic of printers. In the morning the 
article appeared, a very rhapsody of nonsense, to the 
great amusement of the readers and the horror of the 
editors. 

Raymond is small in stature and slight, has dark hair, 
gray or light hazel eyes, a thin, nervous face, with dark 
side-whiskers, and is quick and energetic in movement. 
He dresses neatly, but not extravagantly ; has pleasant 
manners; talks fluently and rapidly, and has quite the 
appearance of a busy man of the world. He would 
be thought a merchant, by strangers, or, perhaps, a 
stock-broker, rather than a literary man or a journalist. 

He was married while quite young ; has five or six 
children, the eldest a son in his eighteenth year. He 
has made journalism profitable; his income being pro- 
bably $20,000 to $25,000. He lives very comfortably, 
having a house in town and one in the country. His 
wife spends much of the time in Europe, and he him- 
self has made four or five tours of the Continent. He 
is the author of several books that have had a large 
sale, and will probably write a dozen before he has 
surrendered active duties. 

Raymond is very sociable; likes company exceed- 
ingly, and when he has nothing to do, which is seldom, 
enjoys conversation and story-telling as well as any 
journalist in New- York. He has a great fund of an- 
ecdotes, knows exactly where the point of a story lies 
and when it is reached. He is fond of theatrical en- 
tertainments; has a keen relish of the good things of 
life ; is in no sense an ascetic or a puritan, but much 



Henry J. Raymond. 235 

of a practical optimist, who thinks the World was made 
for our enjoyment, and that work is necessary to pleas- 
ure no less than to health. He is very well liked by 
his brother journalists, and has a large circle of friends. 
A great deal has been said of Raymond's inconsist- 
ency and trimming. He certainly varies his political 
course a good deal, but he is sincere in his variations. 
In conversation with a friend he once spoke of his 
ability to see two sides of everythi-ng. " I always try," 
he said, "when one side is presented to look at the 
other, and in turning it round, I am instinctively in- 
clined to favor the reverse of the side I have first ex- 
amined." This is the true key, no doubt, to Raymond's 
vagaries, as they are called. They belong to his tem- 
perament, and are part of himself as much as the color 
of his eyes or the curve of his spine. 



CHAPTER XXV. 
THE BATTERY. 

The Battery is a kind of connecting line between 
New-York past and present. No other place in the 
City, probably, has so many associations, or is so pro- 
lific of historic and personal memories. Yet no one 
can visit the extreme southern point of the island of 
Manhattan without feeling something like pain at the 
departed glory of the Battery, the shorn beauty of 
that once delightful look-out to the picturesque bay 
and the ever-suggestive sea. 

The Battery was laid out nearly a century ago, and 
is associated with many stirring scenes of the Revolu- 
tion. The early heroes and fathers of the country trod 
its ground, when Washington's headquarters were 
within a stone's throw of the spot; and there the 
enemies of the then unborn Republic at one time 
pressed their victorious feet. After our independence 
was secured, the Battery was converted into a public 
promenade, and was, for half a century, what the Cen- 
tral Park has since become to the Metropolis. For 
years there was no other lounging or bathing place; 
and there the fashion and wealth of the City disported 
themselves in pleasant weather, and drank in the ocean 
breezes which swept our scanty commerce to and from 
our thinly settled shores. 



The Battery. 237 

There walked, and talked, and laughed our mothers 
and grandmothers, and even our great-grandmothers, 
who had seen Washington review his little army on 
the Battery ; who had waved their handkerchiefs when 
Lafayette was received there ; who had loojked with 
patriotic and admiring eyes upon Montgomery when 
he lifted his hat to them, and the salt sea-breeze stirred 
his clustering hair. 

What foreigner of note who has ever paid us a visit, 
what American of celebrity, has not walked on the 
Battery, and watched the sails of the receding ships 
flashing in the distance, as the sunlight caught them, 
like the wings of great gulls that seem to live grace- 
fully upon the troubled deep? Benjamin Franklin 
has reflected there, and observed the gathering tempest 
which spoke to him in thunder, that was then an un- 
revealed law of science. Bryant, in his youth, may 
have caught the idea of Thanatopsis and the Hymn to 
the North Star, while listening to the wash of the 
waves, and the faint calling of the far-off sea. Emer- 
son has gazed with his calm eyes across the broad bay, 
and gone home to his quiet Concord study, and written 
with the Atlantic's murmur in his ear, and reproduced 
it in his dreams of destiny and visions of the future. 

Long after the City Hall Park and Union Square 
were popular places of resort, the Battery kept its hold 
upon the affections of the citizens and strangers ; and 
to-day, dismantled and deformed as it is with unsightly 
objects, it is the most pleasant resort in New- York. 
It is a pity it has been converted to common uses, and 
permitted to run to waste ; for its delightful view is 
unimpaired ; the vessels and water-craft of every kind 
come and go, and the bay laughs with its green 



238 The Great MEXiioroLis. 

dimples, as they did when Bowling Green, surrendered 
■■completely now to shipping offices, was the Belgravia 
of the town. 

When Jenny Lind came to America, so adroitly ad- 
vertised and bepraised that many of the credulous 
believed her half an angel, she filled Castle Garden 
with her first notes. And when the florid and self- 
conscious Jullien gave his initial monster concert in the 
United States, the crash of his hundred instruments 
grew mellow as it fell from Castle Garden over the 
waters that curled about the walls of the Battery. 

After that, Castle Garden lost its prestige. Artists 
no longer honored it with their efforts, and enthusi- 
astic audiences no more awoke its echoes with their 
applause. 

New- York had retreated too far from the Battery, 
which was then made an emigrant depot; and now 
only lovers of nature and a few strangers wander in 
its neglected walks, watching the ships, and listening 
to the sea, as of yore, conscious that the ocean and 
the sky must be ever fresh and fair. 

The Battery is the first glimpse seven-eighths of the 
emigrants from Europe catch of the New World ; and 
they must remember it always, therefore, with its bleak 
and barren appearance, looking bleaker and barrener 
to them for their expectation of finding this country a 
perfect Paradise. It is interesting to watch these 
strangers as they step for the first time upon free soil, 
and breathe for the first time the atmosphere of the 
model republic. 

They must have deemed it singular, a few years 
ago, to behold on the grounds of the Battery, all the 
appearance of the oppressed lands they had left be- 



The Battery. 239 

hind — barracks of soldiers, armed men, the movement 
of artillery. But that, fortunately, was only a pause 
in the giant's growth, a convulsion of the elements 
that cleared the air. 

Every week about a thousand Europeans arrive at 
the Battery, and are distributed throughout the won- 
derful country where they have hoped to find happi- 
ness and wealth growing on every tree. Mostly Ger- 
mans and Irish, who have rarely seen large cities, save 
in passing through on their trans- Atlantic journey, 
they seem lost in surprise and pleasure, while they go 
gaping and staring up roaring Broadway, jostled and 
bewildered by thousands of well-dressed men, bent, 
apparently, on missions of life and death. 

Not strange that they are confused when the great 
thoroughfare bursts upon them. It must be a revela- 
tion, a sensation, an era, the realization of some fan- 
tastic dream ; and as they stand at the corners, or are 
shouted at by hackmen and truckmen, no doubt they 
are endeavoring to determine to their own satisfaction 
if they are really awake. 

We Americans, all more or less cosmopolitan, can 
hardly comprehend how great and sudden must be the 
change to the poor, oppressed Irishman, or patient, 
plodding German, who has lived all his life so hard 
and narrowly that comfort and liberty, as we under- 
stand them, are almost unknown. To take us out of 
our sleep, and drop us down in Jeddo, or Canton, or 
Damascus, or Alexandria, would be little compared to 
the removal of a half-intelligent foreigner from a rural 
village of the continent to the heart of New- York. 

When the emigrants first set foot on the Battery 
they are compelled to run the gauntlet of sharpers and 



240 The Great Metropolis. 

rogues, generally foreigners like themselves, whom too 
much and too sudden liberty has demoralized beyond 
hope of reformation. The graceless scamps lie in wait 
like beasts of prey for the unsuspecting and ignorant 
strangers, and, whenever the police do not prevent, 
pounce upon and plunder them recklessly of their 
slender savings. The knaves assume to be officers of 
the Government; charge them a sum for their initia- 
tion to the country ; a price for the ir luggage, and 
then steal it ; carry them off to wretched boarding- 
houses, where they are robbed again, and beaten if 
they protest; play all manner of dishonest tricks upon 
them, until they often pray in their hearts, I suspect, 
that they were comfortably back in their humble 
homes. 

Poor creatures! it is the fiery ordeal they are com- 
pelled to pass. But they soon find those willing and 
glad to deliver them from the knaves into whose hands 
they have fallen ; and from that hour the star of fortune 
rises above their new horizon. 

How many times I have watched the groups of 
emigrants wandering about the Battery, and fancied 
their ideas and feelings in the new land to which they 
have come. 

Men, women and children, how oddly they look; 
but not half so oddly as we to them, I suspect. 

An intelligent foreigner once told me the first im- 
pression he received of the country was, that every 
man here wore a clean shirt; which was only another 
way of speaking of the neatness, and wholesomeness, 
and prosperity of the people at large. I presume the 
extensive scale upon which everything is done by, and 
the apparent comfort and wealth of, the Americans, 



The Battery. 241 

must be the first idea that the emigrants receive, par- 
ticularly when they pass up the main aisles of the 
City. If they were to walk through the Fourth, or 
Sixth, or Tenth wards, — many parts of them, at least, — 
they would suppose they had not improved their pros- 
pects by crossing the ocean. For there, the squalor, 
and poverty to which they have been accustomed, if 
they have lived in European cities, must strike them as 
familiar sights. 

The different nationalities represent their different 
traits of character on their arrival. The Irish are ex- 
cited, sanguine, merry and belligerent on the smallest 
provocation ; ^indeed, the atmosphere of the Republic 
seems to generate bellicose qualities. Our Hibernian 
brothers are the only people under the sun who fight 
for the pure love of the thing, and who seem to like a 
man the better after a few knock-downs, either given or 
received. 

The German is staid, quiet, sober, when he lands, 
and remains so to the end. He is fond of company, 
capable of great self-enjoyment; but he is moderate 
in his pleasures, and thrifty to the last degree. He 
does not make much money, but he rarel}' spends it, 
and gro\vs wealthy after a while by a rigid economy. 

Tlic Sjotch are somewhat like the discreet Teutons, 
with more tact and perspicacity. They prosper mate- 
rially if any avenue be opened. If there be not, they 
probably open one themselves. They are canny as 
the proverb makes them, — resembling the Germans in 
their fondness for companionship and social pleasures. 

The French are still French. They adhere to each 

other, and sigh for Paris. When they can, they return 

to France, and wonder what is the use of any other 

place but its gay capital. 
16 



242 



The Great Metropolis. 



The Italians run to plaster casts, and organs, and 
monkeys and fruit, for the most part, — congregating 
in the same quarter, and dragging Italy across the sea 
as best they may. 

Yet America affects them all insensibly; enlarges 
them; deepens them; elevates them. They rarely — I 
never heard of a single instance — regret the day they 
come, or the hour they arrive here, and they usuallj 
remember the Battery with a tender affection. 




THE battery in 1861. 



CHAPTER XVI. 
THE GAMBLING- HOUSES. 

The instinct to gamble is strong in humanity. It 
needs development only, in the shape of circumstance, 
to convert hermits into hazarders, and gownsmen into 
gamesters. 

Every man is conscious of this, and avo'ds the op- 
portunity and its temptations. However, they find 
him often when he avoids them too sedulously, and he 
yields, as women yield when passion masters their 
hearts. 

Such gambling is gambling in the restricted and 
proscribed sense — the hazarding of money against 
cards or dice. With a laro;er and truer meanins:, all 
men are gamblers. All life is a great game. Power, 
love, wealth, reputation, are the stakes we play for, 
and Death wins all. 

Trade and business of every species are gambling 
under another name. The successful merchant and 
banker are esteemed and honored in life, and epitaphs, 
false or fulsome, written over their graves. They who 
deal with paste-board and ivory are christened '^black- 
legs," and 'Virtuous society" places them beyond its 
pale. The Wall street gambler is crowned with lau- 
rels, and the no more dishonest gamester of Houston 
street with the cypress of reputation. One wears the 



244 The Great Metropolis. 

Bralimin's sacred robes; the other the Pariah's garb, 
and yet their spiritual caste is the same. 

The character of America and Americans generates 
a spirit of recklessness and adventure which is the pa- 
rent of gambling. We feverish Anglo-Saxon-Nor- 
mans, or whatever we may be, lay wagers of our 
peace, and hope, and life itself against destiny and 
death, and accept the result with the indifference of 
philosophy or the calmness of despair. 

Here in New-York, where all life is concentrated, 
and a year crowded into a month, the prompting to 
gamble comes in with the breeze from the sea. The 
pulses of expectation and ambition rise and fall with 
the tides that wash this crowded strip of a million 
struggling souls. 

Fifth, and Lexington,, and Madison avenues gamble 
as well as Wall, and Broad, and New streets. There 
socially ; here financially; but all with dice they fancy 
loaded. 

In the Metropolis, it is estimated there are nearly 
2,500 gambling places, (as gambling is generall}^ un- 
derstood,) from the gorgeous saloon, where tens of 
thousands are gained and lost, in single nights, to un- 
healthy and dingy cellars, Avhere besotted beggars 
play for pennies, and are satisfied to win the purchase 
of the poison that maddens, but is slow to kill. 

The "respectable" and fashionable establishments 
are mostly in Broadway, though Fifth Avenue, and 
Houston, and Grand and Pine streets, and the Bowery 
exhibit the pugnacious tiger with show and pretension 
to those inclined to war with him. 

The fierce animal, never averse to combat, and 
never to be slain, roars all over town ; seeks his vie- 



The Gambling-Houses. 245 

tim under the shadow of churches, and in the full 
glitter of fashionable display. He lies in cosy and 
luxurious jumbles of satinwood and velvet, and they 
who do not seek him rarely suspect his presence. Yet 
they who search can always find; and guides are not 
lacking to direct strangers to the favorite haunts of 
the striped beast. He looks handsome at first. His 
claAvs are sheathed, and he lies supine in drowsy sym- 
metry, and rubs his yellow head in playful softness 
against the caressing hand. But he is treacherous as 
savage, and the unwary who woo him most he rends 
the crudest. 

Ml the way from the battery to Thirtieth street, 
gambling saloons are thrust carefully out of sight in 
the upper stories of buildings of stone and marble, 
which thousands pass every day without dreaming of 
their existence. They have no outward sign to the 
many ; but to men about town they are known at a 
. glance. They usually have large gilt numbers on 
glass over doors leading through small vestibules to 
another door with a bell handle at the side, and a 
faithful porter behind. Any one can step into the first 
door from the crowded street, and no one will know 
where or how he has disappeared. 

The faintest sound of the bell brings a peering face 
through a lattice, and after a moment's scanning, un- 
less the visitor or visitors have something suspicious 
in their seeming, the inner door opens, and a hall and 
stairway lead to the apartment where every man's 
money is as good as another's until it is lost, and then 
it is a great deal worse. 

If the weather be cold or inclement without, the 
new scene to which you have been introduced is a 



246 The Great Metropolis. 

pleasant contrast. It gives, suddenly or completely^ 
shelter, warmth, and comfort ; pervades the mind with 
a sense of ease and pleasure, and luxury ; prompts you 
to stay longer than you had intended 

The rooms — there are usually two or three, some- 
times more — are brilliantly lighted and expensively 
furnished. Curtains of satin and lace, sofas of velvet 
or silk, mirrors from ceiling to floor, carpets of crim- 
son and white, carved sideboards sparkling with de- 
canters and goblets, and swimming with liquors and 
wines, tables spread with china and silver, and dishes 
of appetizing odor are there. 

You can recline on lounges, or smoke, or drink, or 
read the papers or magazines, or examine the pictures 
on the walls as long as you will without expense. 
Everything is free to habitues of the saloon, though 
the proprietors expect you to show your appreciation 
of their hospitality by a little patronage now and then. 
But they do not ask you. In the adjoining room for- 
tune holds high carnival, and promises fairly to be 
kind. 

Forget she is feminine, and not to be trusted over- 
much. Go to her boldly, for boldness wins her as it 
does all her sex, and see if she repay you not with 
golden favors. 

That is not counsel. It is the whisper of avarice in 
the heart, the greed of gain, the seductive voice that 
tells of wealth without labor, and pleasure without 
pain. 

The adjoining room is open. It is closed to none. 
Enter ; and, if you do not play, perhaps the game 
will interest you. Such your thought and prompting, 
and you go in. 



The Gambling-Houses. 247 

This department is more quiet than the others, 
where men were talking, and smoking, and laughing. 

The men are young and old; but all are well- 
dressed, rather overdressed, as they are generally in 
New- York. They stand about a cloth-covered table, 
on which cards are fastened, and put down circular 
pieces of ivory, known as "chips," while a hard-faced 
fellow draws the cards corresponding to those on the 
cloth from a silver box, and throws them to the right 
and left. 

One pile is the banker's, the other the better's; the 
game being faro, of course. If you have put your 
"chips" on the card whose corresponding one falls on 
your pile, you have won ; if on the banker's, you have 
lost. 

The game is very simple and seems fair ; and it is 
the fairest of gambling games. Yet the advantages in 
favor of the banker are such that he must always win 
in the long run. Faro banks are broken sometimes. 
But hundreds of betters must be broken before one 
bank can be. The temptation, even to gamblers, to 
bet against the bank, is so strong that they often make 
affidavit before notaries and witnesses to abstain from 
staking their money on that side of the table, as they 
say, for six months, or a year, or a lifetime even. 

The difference between the professional and ama- 
teur gambler is very marked. The latter is anxious, 
pale, nervous ; his voice is unsteady and hoarse ; and 
he calls often for wine or liquor. His whole soul is in 
the game. His eye watches it with a quivering glow. 
He smiles with a sickly smile sometimes, especially 
when he loses largely ; but the counterfeit would not 
deceive a child. 



243 The Great Metropolis. 

The professionars face is cold aud fixed as marble. 
The closest scrutiny could not determine if he was 
winning or losing. With the same stolid indifierence 
he takes in and pays out the money, even if he owns 
the bank. He is often a dealer only, on a regular 
salary ; but, whether dealer or banker, no one would 
conjecture from his countenance. 

I have seen bankers lose their last stake, and the 
puff of their cigar was as regular as when they had 
gained $20,000 in half an hour. 

A gambler at Baden Baden lost immense sums to a 
dark-browed Spaniard, whom the superstitious fancied 
in league with the Evil One, and, when he passed over 
the last rouleau of gold, he quietly said, " The bank is 
broken," stepped aside, and blew out his brains. 

The patrons of the bank are, as I have said, of dif- 
ferent ages. The beardless youth, the man in middle 
life, the gray-haired, wrinkled man are there, drawn 
by the same fascination. The majority of those pres- 
ent are past middle age ; for love of money survives 
the love of pleasure. 

No one can enter a fashionable gambling-house in 
New-York, unless he has learned the World thorough- 
ly, (the knowledge is not sweet, though it be profita- 
ble) without being surprised at those he meets there, 
without some disturbance of his faith. 

That young man, known to be dissipated, spoiled 
by the over-indulgence of a wealthy but unprincipled 
father, you expected to see at such a place. It is nat- 
ural enough a badly-reared youth, with a bad example 
before him, should seek to gain the means for a still 
more lavish expenditure. Any one can read his des- 
tiny. A few more years of waste and riot; probably 



The Gambling-Houses. 249 

a conventional marriage, without abandonment of mis- 
tresses; death from delirium tremens^ — printed, in the 
morning paper, congestion of the brain — a funeral ser- 
mon in a Fifth avenue church extolling the virtues he 
laughed at in life; a hearse and mourning carriages 
trailing to Greenwood; a comely widow and few 
tears. 

But that sleek, venerable-looking man you did not 
think to encounter. You say you have seen him with 
gold-clasped hymn-book, bending low and repeating 
audibly at Trinity. No doubt. That was Sunday. 
This is Thursday; and the best of fashionable Church 
members may be wicked one day of the week. 

Flushed and pale by turns is the person opposite. 
He has been there regularly for three months past; 
and he has lost of late thousands of dollars, though 
fortune favored him at first. His salary is but $1,500 
in the Petroleum bank. He is assistant teller, and he 
makes his account good with memorandum-checks that 
never can be paid. Possibly he will j)ay the debt by 
paying the one he owes to nature. Desperation is 
upon him, and discovery imminent ; but the Hudson is 
deep, and flows not far away. 

The silence is impressive about the table, save when 
a short quick oath is breathed by a loser, or the voice 
of laughter comes from the supper-room, where the 
jingling of glasses is heard. Men come and go, and 
until long after midnight the game continues — betting 
often growing heavier with the advancing hours. 
Those entering are usually hot with drink, and bet 
carelessly and blindly, and are lucky not seldom. 
Those departing look wan and wretched, for they have 
lost everything. They dash down a glass of liquor, as 



250 The Great Metropolis. 

they go out, to drown memory, and Broadway greets 
tliem as before ; but all is changed. 

Hundreds of these faro banks, splendid, fascinating 
dangerous, are in every fashionable and frequented 
quarter, particularly near the hotels and theatres. They 
have regular attaches, who are either salaried or receive 
a certain per centage for the strangers they induce to 
enter the gilded hells. Those decoys are very ener- 
getic and persevering. They frequent the hotels, res- 
taurants, bar-rooms and places of amusement; make 
acquaintances by pretending to have met the strangers 
somewhere before ; inviting them to drink, to take a 
walk, to step in and see a friend, and all the well- 
known rest. 

Strange, men can be so easily duped. But they can. 
The oldest tricks seem to become new every day. 
The pretending-to-be world-wise walk into open pit- 
falls with open eyes. Many of the gambling-saloons 
are conducted as honestly as such places can be. But 
more are mere pretexts for plunder. Strangers are 
drugged, and, when consciousness returns, they have 
been robbed. At many, professional bullies manufac- 
ture quarrels, and steal under appearance of fighting. 

In the First, Fourth and Fifth wards, desperate 
characters are to be found, with dirty cards and bloated 
faces, prepared for burglary and murder, but prefer- 
ring the easier task of swindling. 

In the low bagnios of Greene, and Mercer, and 
Thompson streets, cards, and dice, and "sweat-cloths" 
can be had for less than the asking. 

In the William street and Bowery concert saloons, 
monte, and vingt-un, and roulette, and rouge-et-noir, 
and, of recent months, coulo and keno, have been play- 
ed, and are still. 



The Gambling-Houses. 251 

Sailors' boarding-houses in Water, and Pearl, and 
West streets, employ runners to seize mariners, who 
are robbed and beaten, and have no redress. 

All over the island, gambling goes on. But the 
most dangerous places are the fashionable saloons in 
Broadway and in the vicinity of Union and Madison 
squares. Where champagne sparkles, and gamblers 
are elegantly dressed and have good manners, the first 
temptation is offered, and the first steps downward are 
covered with velvet, so soft that the falling footstep 
awakes not the most timid fear. 

The proprietors of the fashionable gambling-saloons 
in New- York live like princes, but usually spend as 
they go. They have incomes reckoned by tens of 
thousands; but their mistresses, and horses, and luxu- 
rious establishments, and hazards leave them but little 
at the close of the year. Some of them are men of 
education and family ; but generally they are of vulgar 
origin, and have learned those characteristics of gen- 
tlemen — coolness and self-possession — only as a neces- 
sary accompaniment of their perfidious calling. They 
appear well often. But, taken beyond their depth, 
they betray the coarseness of their nature, and thd 
meanness of their associations. 



CHAPTER XXVn. 
HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

If tlie country contains any man in or out of the 
pulpit more popular, in the strict sense of the term, 
than Henry Ward Beecher, I do not know him. That 
he is regarded more as a man than a clergyman, is 
shown by the fact that, in speaking of him, the prefix 
of "reverend" is rarely applied to his name. Indeed, 
there seems to be something inappropriate in the title, 
intimately as Beecher has been associated with the 
clerical profession all his life. He is the representative 
of the liberal American mind rather than of the Con- 
gregational church; of humanity rather than of a 
creed : hence his reputation and influence. 

Henry Ward Beecher was born June 27, 1813, at 
Litchfield, Conn., graduated at Amherst, Mass., in his 
twenty -first year ; studied theology under his father, 
the celebrated Lyman Beecher, at Lane Seminary, near 
Cincinnati, Ohio, and in 1837 was placed in charge of a 
Presbyterian church in Lawrenceburg, Ind. He re- 
mained there only two years, having been called to 
Indianapolis, where he continued until 1847. His ser- 
mons were from the beginning marked by freshness, 
boldness and originality, and attracted so much atten-, 
tion that he was induced, after spending ten years in 



Henry Ward Beecher. 253 

tlie West, to accept the pulpit of Plymoutli Church, 
Brooklyn, of which he has ever since been the pastor. 
Though he lives in Brooklyn, he is so identified with 
New- York that he could not, with fitness, be omitted 
from this volume. 

The Beechers are unquestionably a gifted family, 
and some of them have shown something very like 
genius and an inclination, if not determination, to fol- 
low their own thoughts and express their own judg- 
ment. Common traits are visible in Lyman, the father, 
and in the children, Edward, Henry, Harriet and 
Catherine. They are all strong-minded, brave-hearted, 
firm-souled ; and their peculiarities have reproduced a 
new form of the old epigram, that mankind is com- 
posed of the human family and the Beechers. 

At school Beecher was not remarkable for applica- 
tion or diligence. He was bright, but, on the whole, 
rather indolent, so far as routine studies were con- 
cerned. He was a perpetual reader, and exceedingly 
fond of Nature. Often, when he should have been 
conning his lessons, he was wandering in the woods, 
or lying beside streams, devouring some one of the 
numerous volumes he was more ready to borrow than 
return. Several of his professors predicted he would 
never amount to anything, and others that he would 
come to some bad end. They were false prophets, as 
they generally are ; for their knowledge is of books, 
not of men. They are prone to believe any youth 
who does not put his soul into Greek hexameters and 
conic sections, and fails of punctuality at chapel ser- 
vice, is tending to irremediable evil. Beecher did 
not, I am glad to say, graduate with the highest hon- 
ors of his class, as the stereotyped expression is. On 



254 The Great Metropolis. 

the contrary, he barely got through ; and if he had 
not gotten through, he would have been little grieved, 
for he always held the deepest wisdom to be in com- 
munion with Man and Nature, through whom God is 
revealed. 

Lyman Beecher had, from Henry's childhood, de- 
signed him for the church. He was not alarmed by 
the eccentricity of the youth, for he had deep faith in 
the boy's good sense, stability of character, and dispo- 
sition to do right. He was proud of him, too ; be- 
lieved him a genius because he was a Beecher, and 
the son of his father, and preordained, therefore, to 
walk in the true ways of the righteous. 

Henry Ward had no natural appetite for theology ; 
thought seriously of being a sailor, a traveler, a phy- 
sician, a public speaker. But his filial affection and 
the earnest wishes of his father determined his course, 
and sent him to Lane Seminary. He showed there 
many of the eccentricities of Amherst. He roamed 
over the beautiful hills about Cincinnati, sometimes 
even on Sunday; and it is rumored that he "pro- 
faned" the sacred day by reading poetry and novels. 
He was heterodox, too, in his liking for feminine so- 
ciety — girls, especially those of a superior age (clever 
and precocious boys are usually attracted to women 
of twice their years) having always interested him, 
and drawn him even from the books he read with the 
sweetness of conscious interdiction. Li spite of the 
rather stiff and sombre character of Lane Seminary, 
Beecher seems to have had quite a good time there, 
and he still preserves very happy memories of the 
days spent at Walnut Hills. Many of the residents of 
the neighborhood recollect him as a merry, light- 



Henry Ward Beecher. 255 

hearted youth, as unlike his fellow-students, and as 
free from formality and seriousness as if he had 
dropped down at the Seminary from the planet Mer- 
cury or Venus. 

There has always been something a trifle grotesque, 
to my mind, in Beecher's being a Congregational min- 
ister, not because Beecher is so peculiar, but because 
he is so unlike all other divines of that church. For 
more than twenty years he has filled the Plymouth 
church pulpit, and has constantly advanced what, in 
any other man, would have been deemed the most 
startling and pernicious heresies. He has escaped 
condemnation and expulsion by his honesty and au- 
dacity. His boldness of utterance has frightened the 
timid into silence, and the thoughtful into admiration. 
Every one has deemed him sincere and zealous, and 
has accepted his breadth and toleration as the ad- 
vanced conditions of a higher Christianity. 

Beecher must have startled his flock at first ; for its 
members were very different when he took charge of 
their spiritual direction from what they have since 
become under his teachings. But he has shown su- 
preme tact and admirable discretion ; his fine instincts 
revealing to him what he could and what he could not 
say, and when the opportunity was ripe for a theologic 
coup d' etat. 

I can imagine with what an uncomfortable feeling 
many of his spiritual brothers and sisters must have 
heard his first invitation to all who believed in Jesus 
Christ to take the sacrament. They have grown used 
to him now. He has educated them up to a height 
from which they would once have looked down dizzily. 
He has led them along unconsciously until they hardly 



256 Till: Great Metroi'Oiis. 

know over what an iniraonse space they have traveled. 
The floods they feared, and the precipices they dreaded, 
were found to be flowing by picturesque banks, and 
commanding beautiful views, whose existence they 
had been unconscious of 

I do not wonder many people say Beech er does not 
and cannot believe in his creed. He is too broad for 
it; but he does an immense deal of good in an ortho- 
dox pulpit that he could not do in any other. He 
knows that ; he is dimly conscious of a pious fraud ; 
but he thinks the end justifies the means. He satisfies 
his conscience by the conviction that he is broadening 
all theology, and by degrees making it and Christianity 
oiie and the same thing. 

They who hold such opinions are mistaken. Beecher 
is sincere and earnest beyond question. He is broader 
than his church is usually regarded, but not broader 
than his interpretation of its dogmas. He expounds 
the truths of the Bible for himself instead of being 
bound by the explanations of others ; and no one 
will say Humanity and Christianity are not on his 
side. He is a natural man, in perfect health, and 
therefore cheerful, buoyant, hopeful. He does not 
fancy himself pious because he is bilious, or devoted 
because suffering from dyspepsia. 

Beecher has been compared to Spurgeon ; but one 
suggests the other only by contrast. Beecher seems odd, 
for he is what few men in the pulpit are, an individual. 
He is eccentric without affecting eccentricity, and his 
peculiar oratory is so different from the starched com- 
mon-places and narrow theology of some divines that I 
do not marvel it is captivating alike to the ordinary 
and the cultivated. He does not believe his office is 



Henry Ward Beecher. 257 

sacred unless he fills it with living work and vital 
faith in humanity ; and he does not claim for his posi- 
tion what he, the man, fails to yield to it. Other 
preachers lose the man in the profession. Beecher 
loses the profession in the man ; and this, I suspect, is 
more than all else the secret of his clerical success. 

Beecher was one of the founders of the Independent^ 
the most lucrative religious paper in the country. He 
was for years its de facto editor, and contributed to it 
a series of fresh, racy and vigorous articles signed with 
an asterisk, which were afterwards published in book 
form under the title of the "Star Papers," and had a 
wide sale. Several years since he dissolvoJ his con- 
nection with the Independent on account of his numer- 
ous employments, sacerdotal and secular. 

Hardly any man dwelling in the metropolian dis- 
trict is more industrious than he. He has an appe 
tite for work that is hardly appeasable. However 
much he does he is dissatisfied because he does not do 
more. Between his sermons and church duties, h's 
correspondence and lectures, his general literary work 
and his travels hither and thither, he has little time 
he can call his own. 

He has written and completed a number of able and 
eloquent volumes, and is nowengnged upon a "Life of 
Jesus," which will be his most elaborate and finished 
work. He will not complete it probably for several 
years, but when he doss, it will necessarily attract 
great attention, be sharply criticised and generally 
read. The opinions of such a man as Beecher on 
Christ are worth hearing, especially as he has said that 
he can only understand God through his Divine So:i; 
that Eternal Goodness, Justice and Mercy are made 

17 



258 The Great Metropolis. 

clear and certain througli the suffering and atonement 
of the Savior of Mankind. 

'' Norwood" has done much to popularize Beecher^s 
mode of thought and his views on religion. Though 
not a novel according to the rules of art, it is very in- 
teresting as a record of the author's opinions and sym- 
pathies. The fact that he was about to write a novel, 
troubled a part of his congregation at first ; but he 
is always troubling its most orthodox members, and 
they soon reconciled themselves to what they have 
come to believe his inevitable waywardness. The pub- 
lication of ''Norwood" in the Ledger increased the 
circulation one hundred thousand, so that Robert Bon- 
ner could well afford to pay $30,000 to its author. 

With the exception of John B. Gough, Beecher is 
probably the most popular lecturer in the country. 
He did not lecture last season, nor will he this, albeit 
he can make $10,000 every Winter he consents to ap- 
pear before lyceums. 

He took a deep interest in politics after the question 
of slavery entered into them. In 1856 he addressed 
mass meetings in favor of the Republican candidates, 
and continues to be a stump speaker whenever he be- 
lieves he can benefit the cause. He was untiring in 
his efforts to strengthen the North dui'ing the rebellion, 
and it is said, after Sumter was fired on, he was with 
difficulty prevented from taking up a musket in defence 
of the country. He was only kept out of the ranks 
by his friends proving to him logically that he could be 
of infin'tely greater service in influencing public opin- 
ion with his voice and pen than in acting as a private 
soldier. 

Beecher has a good income, much of which he is 



Henry Ward Beecher. 259 

reputed to expend in charity. Last year he returned 
about $40,000, the greater part of which was, no doubt, 
from "Norwood." His salary as pastor of Plymouth 
Church is $10,000 or $12,000, and he earns quite as 
much in other ways. He has an amiable and devoted 
wife and several children, one of whom, his eldest son, 
served as a captain of artillery during the War, and 
another who is now entering Yale college. He has a 
very pleasant and comfortable home in Brooklyn, full 
of pictures, books, Scripture mottoes and sunshine. 
Everyone knows how he looks ; that his face is quite 
as physical as spiritual ; that he is always in robust 
health, and that in his fifty-fifth year he appears like a 
great, fresh-hearted boy released from the school of 
tradition for a Summer holiday of good-fellowship and 
common sense. 



CHAPTER XXVni. 
THE RESTAURANTS. 

To A STRANGER, New-York must seem to be perpetu- 
ally engaged in eating. Go where you will between 
the hours of 8 in the morning and 6 in the evening, 
and you are reminded that man is a cooking animal. 
Tables are always spread; knives and forks are always 
ratthnor a"-ainst dishes; the odors of the kitchen are 
always rising. Is the appetite of the Metropolis ever 
appeased? you think. Whence come all the people 
to devour all the food that is displayed in every shop 
between Whitehall slip and Central Park. 

In West and Water streets, as well as in Broadway 
and Fourteenth, the appetite is tempted, tlioagh in 
more or less delicate ways. The whole island appears 
covered with oysters and clams, and the destiny of its 
inhabitants to eat is clear. We are forced to believe 
no one can be hungry in New-York, which seems to 
contain food enough to supply the entire nation. This 
must impress the emigrant as the land of plenty, the 
great store-house of the World. And yet hundreds 
daily pass the richly-furnished restaurants and heaps 
of prepared provisions, without the means of gratify- 
ing their hunger. 

One advantage of New-York is that a man can live 
here very much as he chooses. He can live ftishiona- 



The Restaurants. 261 

bly and luxuriously for from one to five hundred dol- 
lars, or meanly and poorly for six to eight dollars a 
week. The latter method very few Americans adopt 
unless compelled by absolute necessity; and not then 
very long, for laudanum is not dear, and the rivers 
are very deep. 

The City contains five or six thousand restaurants 
and eating-houses of different kinds. Nearly all of 
them do a successful business, and many make their 
proprietors rich in a very few years. They vary as 
greatly in their appearance and prices as in the char- 
acter of their patrons. They range from the elegance 
and costliness of Delmonico's and Taylor's to the sub- 
terranean sties where men are fed like swine, and dirt 
is served gratis in unhomoeopathic doses. There, are 
silver, and porcelain, and crystal, and fine linen, and 
dainty service. Here, are broken earthen-ware, 
soiled table-cloths, and coarse dishes. In Fourteenth 
street, you pay for a single meal what would keep 
you for a week below Chambers street, and give you 
dyspepsia withal unless you have the stomach of an 
ostrich. 

One wonders how even this great City can support 
so many eating-houses. It could not but for the great 
distance between the business and residence quarters, 
and the consequent necessity of the commercial classes 
dining or lunching down town. Nearly three-quarters 
of the restaurants below Canal street owe their support 
to that fact; for as soon as the mercantile tide sets 
northward, their trade is over for the day. 

Nowhere else in this country do men live so largely 
at restaurants as in New- York. Nowhere else are 
lodging and eating so completely and strictly divided. 



262 The Great Metropolis. 

Probably 150,000 of our population rent rooms up 
town, and get their meals down town. They adopt 
that mode of existence because they are not able to 
live at hotels, and they are unwilling to put up with 
what is termed, by an ingenious figure of speech, 
boarding-house accommodations. 

Eating is done in the Metropolis with the haste of 
Americans intensified. From 12 o'clock to 3 of the 
afternoon, the down-town eating-houses are in one con- 
tinuous roar. The clatter of plates and knives, the 
slamming of doors, the talking and giving of orders 
by the customers, the bellowing of waiters, are min- 
gled in a wild chaos. The sole wonder is how any 
one gets anything; how the waiters understand any- 
thing; how anything is paid for, or expected to be 
paid for. Everybody talks at once ; everybody orders 
at once ; everybody eats at once ; and everybody seems 
anxious to pay at once. 

The waiters must be endowed with extraordinary, 
and the cooks with miraculous, power of hearing. How 
could any one expect them to comprehend, "Ham- 
eggs-for-two-oyster-stew-coff" and-ap-pie-for-three-pork- 
beans-ale-cigars-for-four-beef-steak-onions-porter-cigar- 
for-five-mut-'n-chop-mince - pie - black - tea - for - one," all 
pronounced in one word, in various keys and tones, 
with the peculiar recitative of eating-houses? 

It is a curious sight to witness the skirmishing, as it 
is termed, in Park row, Nassau or Fulton streets, about 
the hours named. 

A long counter is crowded with men, either stand- 
ing elbow to elbow, or perched on stools, using knives, 
and forks, and spoons ; talking with their mouths full ; 
gesticulating with their heads, and arms, and bodies ; 



The Restaurants. 263 

eating as if they were on the eve of a journey round 
the World, and never expected to obtain another meal 
this side of the antipodes. The hungry are constantly 
satiated, — constantly going ; but others, as hungry, as 
feverish, as garrulous, as energetic as they, are always 
coming to supply their places, and continue the chaos 
of confusion as before. 

If misery makes strange bed-fellows, restaurants in 
New-York create singular companions. Men meet 
there who never meet anywhere else. Faces become 
familiar at a table that are never thought of at any 
other time. You know the face, as that of your 
brother, or father, or partner; but, when it turns away 
into the crowd, you never suspect, or care, or conjec- 
ture where it goes, or to whom it belongs. 

I heard an old habitue of restaurants say the other 
day, "There's a man I've been seeing for twenty years 
at Crook's. Yet who he is, or what he does, or how 
he lives, I have not the remotest idea. I wonder who 
the devil the old fellow is? But I suppose he has the 
same curiosity about me." 

It is interesting to enter the restaurants now and 
then, and observe the faces, the manners, the general 
bearing of the frequenters. How full they are of op- 
posites and variations! They are very different from 
what I often take or mistake them. 

I remember thinking that that milk-faced, pale- eyed 
man, in such plain and well-worn attire, with such a 
humble air, was a poor clergyman who was probably 
compelled to work for a pittance during the week for 
one of the religious journals, and was firm in this idea 
until, coming down-town one evening, I observed my 
old friend in the hands of the police, who were drag- 



2G4 The Great Metropolis. 

ging him to the Tombs. He was one of the most despe- 
rate burglars in the City, and had for years escaped 
detection. The day after his commitment he was found 
in his cell, hanging by the neck, one of his suspenders 
about his neck, stone dead, — glaring defiance out of 
his glazed eyes at defeated justice. 

There was the hard-visaged, cruel-chinned person, 
who ate like a cormorant. A sinister expression was 
in his eye, which would not meet yours, strive as you 
might to catch it. I was convinced he was a scoundrel 
—a sneak-thief, perhaps ; that he beat his children un- 
mercifully, and ruled his poor, frightened wife with a 
rod of iron. He subsequently proved to be a Wil- 
liamsburg clergyman, and was esteemed a saint by his 
congregation. 

The slovenly, abstracted, care-worn looking mortal 
whom I fancied a carman or a porter, and whom I was 
often tempted to give a dollar to, so woe-begone and 
overworked did he seem, revealed himself to me as 
one of the richest men in New- York. His daily in- 
come was more than all I was worth, including my 
lands along the Guadalquivir and my castles in the 
Pyrenees. 

Strange, all this. Is physiognomy at fault ; or is it 
truer than we think ? 

Seated on that stool is the editor of an ultra repub- 
lican paper ; and, as he cuts his slice of roast beef, 
his elbow touches the arm of the democratic high- 
priest, who claims to dictate the course of the party 
in New- York. They have abused each other for years 
in print ; and now they nod to each other, and drink 
a glass of ale together, and separate, each to tell his 
readers how unprincipled the other is. 



The Restaurants. 265 

Opposite one another at the small table, are two lit- 
erary men whose names are familiar as household 
words all the country over. They recognize each 
other's faces, but neither has the most latent suspicion 
that his neighbor is the famous poet, or the author of 
half a dozen of the best known books in America. 

That handsome, carefully dressed man of fashion 
lights his cigar by the cigar of the pensive artist. 
They have not met before, and yet their warm friend- 
ship for the same metropolitan beauty who has just 
come back from Paris, ought at least to make them 
acquainted. At the door they pass her husband, and 
the artist is unconscious who he is. But the other 
grasps his hand, and presses it as if the husband were 
very near his heart. Do men ever really like the hus- 
bands of the wives they love? 

When evening comes and the business of the day 
is ended, the down-town restaurants are closed, and 
those up-town have their active season. Then Curet's, 
and the Caf^ de FUniversite, and Taylor's, and Del- 
monico's thrive, particularly toward midnight, after 
the theatres and the concerts and the operas are over. 

The up-town restaurants furnish quite a contrast to 
those in the lower quarter of the City. They have no 
confusion, no bustle, no jostling, no door-slamming. 
Ladies elegantly and elaborately dressed go with their 
escorts to upper Broadway and Fourteenth street ; go 
in handsome equipages, amid flower and toilette odors, 
and with all the suggestive poetry that night lends to 
a fine woman, intoxicated with her own sweetness, and 
the consciousness that she is lovable to every sense. 

Late suppers, and rich wines, and low voices, and 
delicious flattery are dangerous, dear madam, even if 



2GG The Great Metropolis. 

you tliink it not. And he who is so gallant and so 
refined, so tender and so generous — such a contrast to 
him you vowed to love when your heart revoked the 
vow — may be more to you than you dream. 

It is hard for a man to be a married woman's friend, 
and only that. Yet every woman declares he shall 
never be aught else ; and, while she declares, is de- 
ceived, and learns nothing by her deception. 

How few of the fashionable wives that sup up town 
after the play or the opera, sup with their husbands ! 
Their husbands may be there ; but they are with other 
women. Etiquette is opposed to the consorting of the 
married in public ; and one might be excused for be- 
lieving the custom founded on nature, so liberally and 
gladly is the custom followed. 

It is an old fashion, but good, nevertheless, that 
persons doomed to live together should love each 
other. Society has changed that, I am aware ; but 
society makes dreadful mistakes sometimes, and, for its 
own convenience and interest, wrecks the happiness 
of individuals not seldom. 

" Do not moralize. The World is well enough as it 
is. We must take it as we find it." 

So says my married friend who smokes his cigar 
contentedly at home, while his pretty wife flirts at a 
brilliant reception, with " one of the best fellows in 
the World." 

Well, I won't moralize. If he is satisfied, why 
should I complain ? 



CHAPTER XXIX. 
MANTON MARBLE. 

Though Henry Mackenzie is known in literature as 
the author of "The Man of the World," he is not, so 
far as is ascertained, a progenitor of Manton Marble, 
called here by the same title. 

Marble is the youngest of the editors-in-chief of the 
Metropolis, and compared to the rest, is rather a new 
man. He was, I believe, attached to the staff of the 
Evening Post for a number of months, but first emerged 
from his obscurity when the World newspaper was es- 
tablished, if my memory serve, in 1860 as a one-cent 
religious paper, so painfully pious that it would not 
publish theatrical advertisements. 

Marble was born, I am informed, in Rhode Island, 
and graduated from Rochester University in his nine- 
teenth year. It is presumed that he inherited little 
more than a good classical education, and that he early 
sought to earn his own livelihood. He had at first 
some ambition to become a lawyer, but discovered in 
himself so strong a bias for writing that after contrib- 
uting for a while to the Providence papers, he con- 
cluded, though unheralded and unknown, to remove 
to the metropolis of New England and seek his for- 
tune there. He had written enough to awake the ad- 
miration of his youthful friends and to gain confidence 
in himself Long before he quitted college he was 



268 The Great Metropolis. 

accounted unusucally clever with his pen, and is said 
to have written the theses of his less capable fellow- 
students, and to have shown as much variety as ac- 
tivity in compositions of his own. 

Arrived in Boston, where the citizens are so much 
engrossed with Greek and Latin that they rarely have 
leisure to study English, Marble went into the office 
of the Traveller and asked for an engagement. 

*'What can you do?" inquired the editor. 

"Almost anything." 

"Have n't you any specialty?" 

*'No. I'll try my hand at any kind of writing." 

"Have you brought letters of recommendation?" 

"No. I think a man's work is his best recommen- 
dation. All I want is a chance. I have determined 
to adopt journalism as a profession, and I have con- 
cluded to begin here." 

"You are confident, at least, my young friend; and 
I like your manner and directness. Have you ever 
tried dramatic criticism?" 

"I shall try it when you have assigned me to some 
duty. I feel quite at home in theatricals." 

"Very well. Forrest plays 'Lear' at the Boston 
Theater this evening. Go there, and let us see what 
you can do." 

Marble attended the performance, and wrote at the 
close two columns of very able and exhaustive criticism 
upon the play, its historic character and its representa- 
tion by the American tragedian." For so young and 
inexperienced a writer the critique was remarkable, 
delighted the editor, and pleased the City of Notions. 
Marble was engaged the next evening upon the regular 
staff, and continued ' the office for two years. He 



Manton Marble. 269 

subsequently connected himself with other papers at 
the "Hub;" but finally out-growing Bunker Hill and 
Boston Common, he came to Broadway and the Central 
Park. 

He went upon the World as a general writer at a 
salary, I have been told, of $30 a week, and rapidly 
rose in the establishment until he was made editor-in- 
chief The paper changed hands, character and poli- 
tics, was revolutionized half a dozen times; from re- 
ligious became secular and then political ; was mildly 
Conservative ; grew Republican ; waxed Democratic — ■ 
feebly at first, ferociously at last ; and amid all those 
changes Marble held on, and developed with them 
into the latest form and freshest shape. 

What his politics were originally, no one seems to 
know. It is said that at college he cherished few con- 
victions, but left his mind free to embrace what at any 
time appeared best. The Republicans declare he is, 
or ought to be, with them ; but that he has tempor- 
ized, and followed where his interests led. Such 
statements are gratuitous. It is fair to presume that 
Marble knows, at least, on what side he wants to be, 
and he certainly has a right to choose his party and 
his principles among the variety prevalent at the 
present time. 

If Marble is individually what he is professionally, a 
man of the world, he is a shrewd and successful one ; 
and it is nobody's affair what he privately thinks or be- 
lieves. He says daily through his columns that he is 
an ultra Democrat, and as such the public is bound to 
accept him and his paper. 

When Marble went into the Woi'ld he was not sup- 
posed to possess anything, and he now has a large 



270 The Great Metropolis. 

interest in the journal he controls, report making him 
owner of more than one-half of all the shares, which 
can hardly be worth less, for his portion, than $150,- 
000. He has manifested tact and energy in getting 
hold of the stock, and lifting himself from a mere sala- 
ried subordinate to the chief-editorship. He receives 
a salary for his services of $6,000 a year, and his pres- 
ent income from his shares ought to be at least $10,000 
to $12,000 more. 

The financial history of the World has been varied. 
It sank money with persevering liberality for several 
years; $300,000 to $350,000 having been swallowed 
up in its fluctuations between theologic sanctity and 
pugnacious partisanship of the most confirmed charac- 
ter. The paper is on a paying basis now, and its 
profits last year are stated to have been about $25,000, 
with a prospect of a material increase during the cur- 
rent year. 

Marble, though still young, is not a hard worker in 
the sense in which Greeley and Raymond are hard 
workers. He manages and directs the fourth or edito- 
rial page alone, leaving the other departments to the 
care of subordinates. He writes most of his editorials, 
not long nor frequent usually, in his own library up 
town, where he lives very comfortably, if not luxuriously, 
sending his manuscript to the office, and receiving 
proofs at home. He was married four or five years 
ago to a lady of fortune, whose death he has recently 
been called upon to mourn. 

Marble is a man of fine culture, being well versed 
in intellectual philosophy and transcendental meta- 
physics. He has read Hume and Hamilton, Buckle 
and Mill, Spencer and Comte, and has dallied with 



Manton Marble. 271 

Kant and Schelling, Fichte and Hegel, as much as an 
active journalist conveniently can unassisted by mental 
cobwebs and vats of lager beer. He is about forty, 
and though he looks materially older than he did at 
the beginning of the War, he would generally be con- 
sidered handsome. Indeed he may lay more claim to 
personal comeliness than any New-York editor of promi- 
nence, and his manners and presence are very good and 
prepossessing. He is under the medium size, rather 
too heavy for his stature, has dark eyes,black hair and 
deep olive complexion. 

Marble is, it is said, a descendant of the Puritans, 
his ancestors having been residents of New England 
for three generations. He is quite picturesque in ap- 
pearance. If he were attired in a velvet doublet with 
slashed sleeves, a conical ribbon-crossed hat put upon 
his head, a guitar slung to his back, a carbine placed 
in his hand, and he himself set down in the midst of 
the Roman campagna, he would be mistaken for an 
Italian bandit of the romantic school. 

Marble is an active politician, a prominent member 
of the Manhattan Club, and, for a journalist, a man 
of elegant leisure, cultivating the graces, more than 
most of his guild, and believing that continual toil 
does not include all the virtues, or make compensation 
for every sharp annoyance and feverish trouble of ex- 
istence. He is something of an epicurean withal, and 
wisely holds that while the uses of labor are sweet 
they need the acid of repose to give them the relish 
that does not pall. 



CHAPTER XXX. 
THE FIVE POINTS 

Nothing indicates the moral improvement of Nevv^- 
York more than the change the notorious locality, the 
Five Points, has undergone during the past ten years. 
It is bad enou2:h now — bad as it can be, one who saw 
it for the first time would think ; but, compared to 
what it was fifteen years ago, it is as a white-sanded 
floor to the Augean stable. 

The Five Points, formed by the intersection of 
Worth, Park and Baxter streets, is within a stone's 
throw of Broadway ; and yet there are thousands of 
persons born and reared here who have never visited 
the famous and infamous quarter. Though the place 
has strangely changed, its reputation is nearly as vile 
as ever — showing how much easier it is to keep a bad 
name than to obtain a good one. The notoriety of 
the Five Points is not only national ; it is trans-Atlan- 
tic. Londoners know it as well as St. Giles; and 
strangers ask to be shown to it before they visit Fifth 
avenue or the Central Park. 

Deformities, after all, seem more interesting than 
beauties to the masses. Most men would rather look 
at a great criminal than a distinguished reformer ; 



The Five Points. 273 

would prefer the head of Probst the murderer, at the 
Museum of Anatomy, to the child-like face of Horace 
Greeley, in Printing-house square. 

The Five Points is the festering nucleus of the Sixth 
ward, which, for nearly half a century, was much the 
worst in the City ; though the Fourth now successfully 
disputes with it the palm of vice. 

The moral suppuration extends far beyond the 
Points, into Mulberry and Mott, Elm and Centre, Pell 
and Dover, James and Roosevelt streets. Within half 
to three-quarters of a mile to the north and south-east 
of the Points, poverty and depravity, ignorance and 
all uncleanliness, walk hand in hand, with drunken 
gait and draggled skirts. Wherever one turns, his 
gaze is offended, his sensibility shocked, his pity and 
disgust excited at once. 

The Five Points presents the other side of life, the 
unpleasant and painful side, which we think to banish 
by ignoring. Going there, we are brought face to 
face with the sternest and most revolting facts of civ- 
ilization, and compelled to admit, much as we may 
wish it otherwise, that education and advancement can 
never be mor.e than partial. 

How vice always creeps under the hedge where 
virtue blossoms fragrantly ! The Five Points is merely 
a background to Broadway and Fifth avenue — a back- 
ground most of us are unwilling to see, but which ex- 
ists, nevertheless, in all its hideousness. 

The Points does not peer out at us in its polluted 
ugliness, as we walk or ride self-satisfied up town ; and 
we take good care to shun such haunts in our every- 
day life of indifference, interest or pleasure. 

Turning out of glittering and crowded Broadway 

18 



274 The Great Metropolis. 

through Worth street, nearly opposite the New- York 
hospital, two minutes' walk brings us to the Five 
Points, with its narrow, crooked, filthy streets; its 
low, foul, rickety frames ; its ancient, worn-down, un- 
savory tenements ; its dark, mephitic green-groceries ; 
its noxious liquor dens ; its unsightly cellars ; its dingy 
old clothes and old furniture establishments ; its muck, 
and mire, and slime, reeking, rotting, oozing out at 
every pore of the pestiferous place. 

The worst parts of London, and Constantinople, and 
Lisbon are concentrated there. Your senses ache, 
and your gorge rises, at the scenes and objects before 
you. Involuntarily your handkerchief goes to your 
nostrils, and your feet carry you away from the social 
carrion into which you have stepped. But if, like a 
young student in the dissecting-room, you have come 
to see and learn, you will stay your flying feet. 

The first thing that impresses you, is the swarm of 
children in every street, before every house and shop, 
and at every corner; children of all ages and color, 
though the general hue inclines to dirt. The ofispring 
of vice is prolific as the offspring of poverty, and both 
are there. From the coarse or cadaverous infant in 
its hard-featured mother's arms, to the half-grown girl 
or boy, unkempt, unwashed, unrestrained, the period 
of early youth is represented. Even maternity is not 
sacred or tender there. No soft light in the mother's 
face, as she gives nourishment from the gross, all-ex- 
posed bosom to the already infected babe. 

What should be the innocence of childhood is ban- 
ished from those purlieus of impurity. Those boys 
and girls have no childhood, no youth, no freshness, 
uo sweetness, no innocence. They have never eaten 



The Five Points. 275 

a mouthful of wholesome food ; mhaled a breath of 
untainted air ; heard the tones of a pure affection. 
They are accursed from their birth ; formed to evil by 
association ; bound to vice by a chain of necessary 
events they cannot break. Pity them, then ; but hate 
them not; and rejoice that to you fortune has been 
less unkind. 

All along the sidewalk, unless it be cold, lounge, sit 
and stand men and women, out of whom all the gen- 
tleness of humanity seems pressed. You cannot see 
anywhere a face that woos or holds you. You do not 
hear a voice that touches you with its tone. Hardness, 
and grimness, and filthiness are in the people and the 
places, spread up, and down, and across every visible 
thing. 

How can any mortal live there? you think. It 
seems a physical impossibility in such an atmosphere, 
with such surroundings. 

See the group near the corner. That gray-haired 
crone, clad so slatternly that you shrink from passing 
her, talks in a hoarse, harsh voice to the young mulatto 
woman who leans against the broken door-way with a 
dirty pipe in her mouth, and leers at you as you go 
by. 

A stalwart, cruel-looking negro sits on the dirty 
door-step, and calls to a white child to get him a dram 
from the opposite grocery — offering a penny for the 
service. 

A young man, not nineteen, perhaps, but looking 
far older from the deep lines in his face, and the scowl- 
ing expression about his brows, curses a boy who peers 
out of the window above, and calls him by names that 
one may not print. The boy answers in kind. The 



276 The Great Metropolis. 

twain seem anxious to outdo each other in profanity 
and obscenity. You fancy murder may be there until 
you hear, rather than see, their horrid laugh. They 
are really friends, — such friends as the Points alone 
can create. They are indulging in pleasantry. They 
are in their most amiable mood ; and soon they join 
each other for a hideous debauch. 

Old and young of both sexes, are mingled every- 
where. You would hardly know the men from the 
women but from their beards and dress. In the women 
the distinction of sex is merely physiological. They 
swear, and drink, and fight like the most brutal men, 
often exceed them in coarseness and cruelty; for 
women who have once violated their nature have the 
redeeming virtues of neither sex. 

Germans are not rare in the quarter; but they are 
usually thrifty. They are buying and selling for pro- 
fit; and after a short time they move to better neigh- 
borhoods to set up bar-rooms and groceries. 

Italians are numerous; for they are indolent, sensual 
and reckless of the future. They have no bias against 
dirt or vice. They love mendicancy, and monkeys, 
and musical instruments when they can be turned to 
practical account. Give them pennies, and garlic, and 
liquor — those of the lazzarone class who dwell there — 
and they will not ask for other comforts. 

Some of the most brutal and desperate men of the 
locality are English. They are generally thieves, 
shoulder-hitters, or burglars, — sometimes murderers, — 
and end their lives in prison or in the gutter. They 
would die on the scaffold had not New- York a preju- 
dice against hanging its greatest scoundrels. When 
they have done something that deserves hanging, they 



The Five Points. 277 

are cliosen members of the City Council or Board of 
Aldermen. 

Negroes are scattered through the Points, though 
most of them, from a long bleaching process, have be- 
come more Caucasian than African in their lineage. 
From this constant intermixture with other races, they 
have nearly died out, and are far less numerous than 
they were a few years ago. 

One rarely sees a genuine black man or woman in 
the quarters ; mulattoes and quadroons have supplied 
their place. 

Before the War, some of the most desperate charac- 
ters were negroes. A number of them were shot and 
stabbed to death; others, strange to say, were hanged, 
and more, not understanding the peculiarity of Metro- 
politan justice, were seized with needless alarm, and 
ran away; foolishly believing other places might be 
as safe for notorious criminals as our own dear New- 
York. Had they been more intelligent, they would 
have known the folly of their flight. 

E-um-selling is the principal business at the Five 
Points; and it is said there is a groggery for every 
hundred adult male inhabitants. Everybody drinks, 
even the children. If they did not, they would not 
stay there. They have to keep themselves down to 
that unnatural level by increasing their bestiality 
through artificial means. 

''Fences," or places for buying stolen goods, are 
very common. There are generally second-hand stores 
and pawnbrokers' shops combined, where a little 
money is lent on a good deal, and where anything 
is purchased without the asking of impertinent ques- 
tions. 



278 The Great Metropolis. 

Retail groceries, where poor provisions are sold 
dear, and liquor vended by license or in secret, emit 
noisome odors at every corner. 

Beyond these three branches of trade, commerce 
has few representatives. One wonders how so many 
shops can be supported. They could not if they had 
honest dealings with their customers. But honesty is 
not even assumed in Baxter street neighborhoods. 
All classes steal ; and they who are cheated last and 
most, steal anew to right themselves, — a simple code 
of mercantile ethics that should commend itself to the 
more complicated one, Wall street. 

The dance-houses, though they no longer share the 
glory of the past, are still a feature of Five Points so- 
ciety, and nowhere else can so vivid an idea of them 
be obtained. Strangers and New-Yorkers often visit 
dance-houses for curiosity; but they take the precau- 
tion to go armed, and under the direction and guid- 
ance of a policeman. Even then they sometimes get 
into trouble, and have been attacked and hurt before 
they could be rescued from the thieves, and harlots, 
and desperadoes among whom they have gone. 

The dance-houses are kept by the lowest and vilest 
of the Five Points residents, and the dancing is usually 
in cellars, or in back rooms, or on ground floors. 
Black and white, males and females, of all ages are ad- 
mitted free. 

A cracked fiddle or two are supplied ; and whoever 
will accept a partner steps upon the floor, and goes 
through the figures of a rude quadrille or waltz, until 
tlie musicians stop to drink, and the dancers to get 
breath. 

If a man dance with one of these unfortunate crea- 



The Five-Poixts. 279 

tures who calls herself a woman, he is expected to buy 
her a glass of liquor. The bar has its profit thereby, 
and the proprietor is paid for keeping up his estab- 
lishment. 

Hour after hour the grim and grinning cyprians 
dance and drink, and drink and dance, with thieves 
and burglars, sailors and bar-tenders, cracksmen and 
murderers, until they are overpowered with liquor, 
and sink down into brutal oblivion; or, on the alert 
for stealing, they wait for their companion's uncon- 
sciousness, and plunder him of his valuables. 

Such orgies are revolting to the last degree; for 
there is no assumption of decorum, no pretense of the 
commonest decency. 

There you see vice laid naked in all its deformity ; 
and consequently, to all but those bred in its bosom, 
it is too repulsive to be dangerous, and too loathsome 
to be attractive. 

Few of the curious care to witness Five Points life, 
or any of its phases, a second time. And they who 
have seen it once must doubt when they have gone 
away, that such shameless sin, such unrelieved gross- 
ness can be daily and hourly indulged in and enjoyed 
by those whose race and kind claim kindred with their 
own. 



CHAPTER XXXL 
THE MORGUE. 

The morgue in Paris has long been one of the ob- 
jects of mournful interest that strangers and sight-seers 
visit. The morgue in New- York, since its establish- 
ment, little more than two years ago, has been one of 
the lions, though a dead lion, of the City, and attracts 
alike the curious and the sympathetic to its shadows. 

The Metropolis alone has a morgue, though all the 
great American cities need, and will doubtless have 
one ere long. The cases of " Found Drowned," "Mys- 
terious Death," "Nameless Tragedy" and the like are 
constantly increasing in this country, particularly in 
this City, and the want of a morgue was felt here years 
before it was instituted. Suicide has grown so alarm- 
ingly prevalent in the United States within a few 
years that our people threaten in undue season to 
equal, if not surpass, the Japanese in self-destruction. 

The English and French no longer enjoy a monopoly 
of throat-cutting, drowning and suffocation by char- 
coal. We Americans kill ourselves for all manner and 
no manner of reasons ; and we seem to find many more 
pretexts for leaping off the precipice of time than 
the people of other lands. 

Everything is in extremes here — the people, the cli- 
mate, the conditions. We are the most nervous and in- 



The Morgue. 281 

tense the most eager and earnest, the most sanguine and 
sensitive, at once the most hopeful and melancholy na- 
tion on the Globe. We are constantly staking our fu- 
ture and our destiny on the cast of a die ; and, when 
we lose, no wonder the thought of self slaughter rises 
in our minds. We are ever inclined to measure our- 
selves against Fate ; and when Fate wins, the click of 
the pistol, or the stroke of the razor, or the leap into 
the water, settles all scores. 

Moreover, our heterogeneous population, our gath- 
ering to our republican bosom the refuse and outcast 
of every soil and zone, naturalizes here each variety of 
crime, and makes murder the chronicle of the hour. 

For such a peculiar condition of a peculiar society, 
where all races, rude and cultivated, toil and weep and 
strive, the morgue is needed — the sad epilogue after 
the dark curtain has fallen upon the tragedy. 

M-o-R-G-u-E you read in prominent letters over the 
lowest door of the Bellevue hospital on the upper side 
of Twenty-sixth street, near the East river. The let- 
ters are gilt ; but they seem set in deep shadows as 
you look at them, like lights burning in vaults of 
the dead. One might imagine the morgue had been 
located so near the broad, deep stream that the mys- 
terious dead in its keeping might float to the door of 
the sombre place. In the still night the murmurs of 
the river, and the flow of the tide, sound strangely 
and mournfully in that quiet neighborhood. They 
seem calling for the unknown corpses under the waves 
to come to the morgue and be recognized. 

The morgue will disappoint you when you enter it. 
It will remind you of a subterranean vault from its 
smallness, quietness and dampness. The room devoted 



282 The Great Metropolis. 

to the purpose is not more than twenty feet square, 
divided by a glass partition, an exact imitation of the 
famous dead house in Paris. 

One compartment, that to which the public is ad- 
mitted, is entirely bare. Nothing on the checkered 
brick floor, nothing on the hard, strong walls but the 
rules of the morgue. 

In the other compartment beyond the glass partition 
are four marble slabs, sujjported upon iron frames. 
Upon those slabs are exposed the bodies, entirely nude, 
except a slight wrapping about the lower part of the 
abdomen, of the unfortunates who have been found 
dead. Gutta percha tubes, suspended from the ceiling 
and connected with a reservoir, drop water steadily 
upon the foreheads of the corpses as they lie there, to 
keep them cool and fresh, and prevent decomposition 
uiitil they are either recognized or removed for burial. 
The bodies are usually kept for twenty-four hours. If 
claimed by friends or acquaintances, in that time, they 
are delivered up with the clothing they wore, and such 
articles as they may have had on their person. After 
that period they are interred at the expense of the 
City, the usual absurd coroner's inquest having been 
held — rather to show, it would appear, how stupid the 
living are than how mysterious the dead — and their 
raiment and effects kept for six months in the event of 
their possible identification. 

The number of bodies at the dead-house varies 
greatly, but increases steadily every season. Some- 
times the four slabs have each a lifeless occupant, 
though that is saldom ; and at others two or three days 
pass without the entrance of a corpse into the morgue. 
The average number of bodies is, about two hundred 



The Moruge. 283 

a year ; and ten years hence, I doubt not they will be 
twice as many. Many of the bodies, perhaps the 
greater part, are never identified ; nor is it singular 
when it is remembered how many hundreds there are 
in this vast City who have neither abiding place nor 
friend. 

The majority of the corpses bear marks of violence, 
and are discovered in the water. Probably one half 
of the persons found have been murdered, and one 
quarter of them have committed suicide. The other 
quarter includes accidental drowning, falling dead in 
the street, run over by street-cars, and other vehicles 
and the natural casualties of city life. 

Strange histories and startling tragedies lie within 
the life and death of those brought to the morgue. If 
all they thought, and felt, and endured, and suffered, 
could be known and written, romancers would not 
need to tax their invention and ingenuity for plots, 
situations and catastrophes. Truth is stranger than 
fiction ; for that is original, and this only a copy. If 
those cold, mute lips could only speak from the still 
heart, still as the white marble beneath it, every liv. 
ing heart would thrill to the utterance as it never has 
over Shakspeare, or Poe, or Dickens. 

A visit to the morgue is attended with somethins: of 
the fascination the horrible has for even the finest of 
us. We like to linger there in spite of the repulsion 
of such a place. We are held, as when in the presence 
of the dead, by an indefinable magnetism, more pain- 
ful than pleasurable ; and yet Ave stay. What a flood 
of suggestions pours in upon us as we contemplate the 
naked figures through the glass! Who were they? 
What were they ? Who loved them? How did they die ? 



2S-1 The Great METiurcis. 

What were their antecedents ? Where are they now ? 
— are the questions every mind asks, and no mind can 
answer. 

That is the figure of an old and genteel-looking man. 
His hair is gray, but soft and fine. His flesh is white, 
and firm, and smooth, as if he had lived comfortably 
and been well cared for. His clothes are fiishionable 
and expensive. A valuable watch and $500 in money 
were found on his person. He could not have been 
murdered. He could hardly have killed himself How 
came he there ? He was a wealthy gentleman from 
the West. 

He was staying at the Fifth Avenue hotel, where his 
daughters are still expecting him. While walking 
through Twenty-third-street, in perfect health, he 
reeled beneath a stroke of apoplexy, fell on the side- 
walk and died in three minutes. Habits of indolence 
and luxurious living have exacted their penalty. No 
one knew him. He was carried to the morgue. 

To-morrow morning's papers will chronicle the 
"sudden death." His daughters will read the descrip- 
tion, hasten to the morgue, pale and frightened, weep- 
ing and trembling ; go home with his remains, and 
forget him in a month. 

The blood still oozes from the gash in this head. 
The face of the man lying on the slat is bronzed and 
scarred with hard lines, as if he had led a life of toil ; 
had had strong passions, and indulged them. Nothing 
was found on his person. His pockets were turned in- 
side out. The body was picked up on one of the East 
river piers, as if it had been dropped there by one 
who intended to hurl it into the water, but had been 
frightened and hurried away. 



The Morgue. 285 

The suspicion is correct. The dead man was a 
sailor. He had come from Liverpool, and with his 
wages in his pocket entered a low den and dance- 
house in Water street, was gotten drunk and an attempt 
made to rob him. He was powerful and resisted 
bravely. He struck the ruffian fiercely in the face, 
until anger added to avarice made a demon of the 
robber, who seized a hatchet and buried it in the vic- 
tim's skull. No further struggle then. All still as 
death, for it was death. Then the fear of detection, 
the effort to hide the murder in the river, and the 
failure through sudden alarm. 

But the murderer goes unpunished. A dozen mur= 
ders have been committed on his premises, and no one 
has yet been convicted. There have been arrests, but 
nothing has been proved. The law is lax, and in 
New- York justice is represented only in marble upon 
the cupola of the City Hall. 

It is folly to say " Murder will out." It will do 
nothing of the sort. More murders are unknown than 
revealed. Without reward there is little hope of re- 
covery, and after a few days no one thinks of the most 
horrid crimes. The community demands a victim to- 
day, but to-morrow its sympathies are excited as its 
indignation has been. "He has not harmed me," says 
each one; "let him go for all me." 

"Found dead, with a bullet through the brain," 
reads the item in the Tribune, and adds that no clue to 
the murder or murderer has yet been discovered. 
The body remains at the morgue for twenty-four hours 
without recognition. He is a foreigner, apparently 
French; looks like a mechanic; silver watch in his 
vest pocket ; few dollars in his wallet ; money evi- 



286 The Great Metropolis. 

dently not the object of the deed. Two weeks pass. 
A wretched, hollow-eyed, half-starved man is picked 
up drunk in the Bowery. He is incoherent, raves, 
dreams terrible dreams. 

Suspicion is awakened. The police look up the 
antecedents of the unfortunate, and it is shown he 
is the murderer of the Frenchman. When accused, 
he makes confession ; says he does not want to live. 
His story is, that he is English, a resident of Birming- 
ham. He saw the Frenchman first five years before, 
and the two became friends. The Gaul was poor, 
penniless indeed, and the Englishman took him to his 
home ; gave him shelter, money, procured him a situ- 
ation. The ungrateful scoundrel seduced his friend's 
wife ; eloped with her ; deserted her eventually, and 
came to America. 

The husband vowed revenge; had no other pur- 
pose ; followed the villain to these shores. Three 
months after arrival in New- York he met the French- 
man in a concert saloon ; invited him to walk out, and 
shot him dead in the street. 

Imprisonment and trial follow. The culprit has 
neither friends nor money, and should not, therefore, 
have indulged in the luxury of taking life. He is 
convicted and hanged in the Tombs yard. Another 
legal murder, far worse than the crime, is added to the 
disgraceful list. 

In America we rarely execute men who take life for 
domestic honor. No man occupying the rank of gen- 
tleman can be hanged in the United States, outside of 
New-England. But with poor fellows and foreigners 
it is quite different. Ropes run smoothly about ple- 
beian necks. 



The Morgue. * 28? 

Suicide. Her features are regular, lier limbs well 
formed. The gentleness and calmness of death have 
come to the worn and dissipated face turned upward 
to the ceiling of the narrow room. She must have 
been young, not more than twenty, I should judge ; 
and yet dead by her own hand ! The faint, peculiar 
odor of laudanum is about those full but colorless lips. 
She was found lifeless in a garret she had rented the 
day before, in a miserable tenement house in Riving- 
ton street. She had given no name. She had paid 
for the room a month in advance ; had gone out but 
on<ie, and then they had found her as she now lies. 
She left a rude scrawl, misspelled and scarcely legible: 
" Tel George I done it at laste. I coudent liv without 
him. I knowd I couldent. Lov is the cans." 

It is the old story — old before Cheop's time. 
Even in the heart of that uneducated, untrained, 
friendless, abandoned girl, Love, after years of prosti- 
tution, had found lodgement and consecration. She 
would have led, at that late day, a true life, had it 
been possible to her ; for love means purity and 
loyalty, even to the vilest. But he, the unworthy ob- 
ject of a sacred passion, deserted her ; and she rubbed 
her dark memory from the face of Nature. Who says 
the age of romance and poetry is over, when common 
courtesans die every day for the love their loathsome 
calling would seem to make them incapable of feel- 
ing? 

The ghastly morgue has, like everything else, its 
humorous side. 

Out of this elegant carriage steps a pretty girl, in 
elaborate toilette, with pale, tear-stained cheek. She 
looks eagerly through the glass, and sees not a single 



288 The Great Metropolis. 

body. She inquires if a young man, describing lum as 
an Apollo, has been brought in ; and the person in 
charge replies: "No, Miss, we havenH had nothin' 
this two days. Bizness is gettin' mighty dull." So 
the girl goes back to the carriage ; tells the liveried 
coachman not to mention where she has been, and is 
driven off. 

Poor sentimental child! She has just had her first 
lover. He didn't come to see her last night, and they had 
had a little quarrel the evening previous, and she fondly 
believed he had destroyed himself on that account. 
Charles is really drinking champagne furiously at Cu- 
ret's with a college chum, and has quite forgotten all 
about the quarrel, and "darling Dora" beside. 

It is not uncommon for women to seek their lovers 
at the morgue, though that is the last place they are 
likely to find them. But men rarely suspect their 
mistresses of self-destruction, perhaps because there is 
such a close connection in feminine minds between 
love and laudanum. 

Wives who have dissipated and eccentric husbands 
visit the morgue frequently in search of their dead 
lords. Is their visit prompted by their wishes, or 
their fears ? 

The morgue is melancholy, but has its uses. You 
and I may meet there, reader, and no more recognize 
each other dead than living. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 
ALEXANDER T. STEWART. 

More than any one else in America probably Alex- 
ander T. Stewart is the embodiment of business. He 
is emphatically a man of money — thinks money ; makes 
money; lives money. Money is the aim and end of 
his existence, and now, at sixty-five, he seems as anx- 
ious to increase his immense wealth as he was when he 
sought his fortune in this country, forty years ago. 
Riches with him, no doubt, have become ambition, 
which is to be the wealthiest man in the United-States. 
For ten or twelve years William B. Astor has been his 
only rival, and it is now uncertain which of the two is 
the greater capitalist. Astor owns more real estate ; 
but Stewart has the larger income. 

Stewart has never been communicative about his 
early life, and those curious in respect to it are gen- 
erally rebuffed in their inquiries. It is known that he 
is a native of Ireland, having been born near Belfast, 
though he claims to be descended from a Scotch fami- 
ly. He is of Scotch-Irish extraction, with the deter- 
mination, perseverance and energy that marks such 
stock, and must of necessity have sprung from the 
heroic defenders of Londonderry, as all the Scotch- 
Irish, risen to any eminence, have done before and 
since his time. 

19 



290 The Great Metropolis. 

In his eighth year Stewart lost his parents, and was 
reared by his maternal grandfather, who intended to 
educate him for the Methodist Church, of which he 
himself was a devout member. The boy is reported 
to have shown very early a resolution to be first in 
whatever he undertook, and to have been foremost in 
his class at Trinity College, Dublin, where, like every 
true son of Erin, he graduated with honor. He was 
then in his eighteenth year, and his grandfather being 
dead he was placed under the guardianship of a Qua- 
ker. Not liking Ireland he concluded to seek his for- 
tune in the New World, and came here in 1823 with 
letters of recommendation to some of the best families 
of Friends in the City. He was a teacher at first, and 
persons now living remeniber when they sat under his 
instruction. 

He either did not succeed in his calling, or did not 
relish it ; for after ten or twelve months of teaching he 
entered a mercantile establishment, though without 
any natural bias for trade, his friends say — a statement 
to be received with liberal allowance. He had an in- 
terest of some kind in the house, and accident, it is 
said, made him a merchant; for his partner died 
suddenly and left the entire responsibility of the busi- 
ness upon the young man of two-and-twenty. He then 
determined to devote himself to trade, and returning 
to Ireland sold the little property he had there ; bought 
a lot of laces with the money, and came back to New- 
York. 

His store was a very small, dismal one in Broadway, 
opposite the City Hall Park — it is torn down now — 
but by close application, skill and taste in buying, and by 
fair dealing with his customers, he soon secured a very 



Alexander T. Stewart. 291 

good trade. His judgment of goods was excellent, 
particularly of fine laces, and he made a practice of 
buying at auction and retailing to much advantage. 
He soon gained the patronage of a number of wealthy 
and fashionable families, and so established a prestige 
that he has never lost. His terms were reasonable ; 
his word could always be depended on, and four or 
five years after setting up for himself he was on the 
high road to independence. 

His small store had by this time become inadequate 
to the accommodation of his numerous customers, and 
he accordingly purchased the lot in Broadway between 
Reade and Chambers, then occupied by the old Wash- 
ington Hall, at about one-fifth of what it is now worth. 
He erected upon the site his present store, the first 
marble building in the great thoroughfare. Stewart's 
"marble palace," as it was long called, was the admi- 
ration of the town and wonder of the country, and so 
distinctive that the proprietor has never put up a 
sign. 

In the new store Stewart secured a large wholesale 
trade, and soon grew to be one of the heaviest impor- 
ters and jobbers in the City. For the past fifteen 
years he has done the largest business in this or prob- 
ably in any other country, and it is still increasing 
monthly. 

His other up-town establishment, corner of Tenth 
street and Broadway, is his retail store. He built it 
seven or eight years ago, and has just extended it to 
embrace almost the whole square. It is two hundred 
feet front on Broadway and Fourth avenue, and three 
hundred and twenty-five on Tenth street, includes 



292 The Great Metropolis. 

nearly two acres, and the structure, six stories in height, 
is the largest dry goods store in the World. 

The third architectural achievement of Stewart is 
his private residence, or what is designed to be such, 
in Fifth avenue, corner of Thirty-fourth street. It is 
a huge white marble pile ; has been four or five years 
in process of erection, and has already cost $2,000,000. 
It is very elaborate and pretentious, but exceedingly 
dismal, reminding one of a vast tomb. Stewart's finan- 
cial ability is extraordinary, but his architectural taste 
cannot be commended. 

Numerous stories are told of the merchant prince, 
some to his credit, and more to his discredit ; but it is 
doubtful if any of them are quite true. He is said to 
be very generous on one hand, and extremely mean 
on the other. He has often given munificently to pub- 
lic charities, but of his private contributions little is 
heard ; whether because they are not made, or because 
he does good by stealth, I shall not undertake to say. 

During the famine in Ireland he purchased a ship, 
loaded it with provisions and sent them there. On the 
return voyage he filled it with young men and women, 
and obtained situations for them before they had 
reached this shore. 

During the War he gave at one time to the Sanitary 
Commission a check for $100,000, which was obtained 
in this way : Some one having asked him to contribute, 
he said he would give as much as Vanderbilt. Yander- 
bilt, on being approached, agreed to give as much as 
Stewart. Stewart then sent the applicant back to 
Vanderbilt, who, in a fit of annoyance, drew on his 
banker for $100,000. Stewart kept his word, and the 
Commission was $200,000 richer by the operation. 



Alexander T. Stewart. 293 

Respecting liis wealth, it is difficult to estimate it. 
It is set down at $30,000,000, and even as high as 
$60,000,000. His income varies greatly. It has been 
less than $1,000,000 and as much as $4,000,000 a year; 
the amount depending upon the activity of trade and 
the fluctuations of the market. Every once in a while 
it is reported in the country that Stewart has failed; 
but in the City his failure is known to be impossible, 
as he has always made it a rule to buy for cash. 

He has the reputation of being strictly truthful. He 
has but one price, and all his goods are what he repre- 
sents them to be ; and to those two things he is under- 
stood to attribute his success. He has three partners, 
William Libby here, Francis Warden in Paris, and G. 
Fox in Manchester, England, and foreign depots in 
Manchester, Belfast, Glasgow, Paris, Berlin and Lyons. 
He supervises and conducts his whole business, and 
works eight or ten hours a day, not unfrequently toil- 
ing over his private ledger on Sunday. He is a mem- 
ber of the Episcopalian Church — St. Mark's, corner of 
Tenth street and Second avenue — and regular in his 
attendance. He is a slave to business, rarely allowing 
himself any recreation. His happiness is in his ac- 
counts and profits, and to be the great merchant of 
New-York is his comfort and his pride. He lives in a 
plain house in the Avenue opposite his unfinished mar- 
ble mausoleum; sees little company; has a wife, but 
no children, and must on the whole have a cheerless 
old age. 

Stewart is a commonplace man in appearance, of 
medium height, slight in figure, thin-visaged, sharp 
features, sandy-grayish hair and whiskers; enjoys good 
health, and on close inspection has a shrewd, searching 



294 The Great Metropolis. 

look which reveals his true character. He is well 
preserved and very vigorous for his age. He makes 
calculations for twenty years more of life, and clings 
to his immense fortune as if he should draw compound 
interest on it after death. Without children, with no 
future beyond the few years that yet remain, all his 
existence is an unbroken round of anxious toil, not 
many who may covet his wealth would, if they knew 
them, envy his surroundings. 



CHAPTER XXXni. 
THE DAILY PRESS. 

Great newspaper establishments are interesting to 
everybody but the persons connected with them. 

The New- York offices, from their central and com- 
manding position, have long been subjects of gossip 
and objects of curiosity. Out-of-town people who 
make visits to the large establishments in Printing 
House Square ; penetrating the mysteries of the press, 
composing and editorial rooms, and, possibly, catching 
a glimpse of Greeley, Bennett, Raymond or Bryant, 
think themselves fortunate, and speak of the fact, for 
years after, as a memorable event. 

Though all Americans read newspapers, not many 
have any clear notion how they are made. They have 
no idea of the amount of labor and capital required 
for the publication of a leading daily in the Metropo- 
lis. Indeed, its interior management and economy is 
a sealed book to them, which they are very glad to 
open whenever opportunity offers. 

The expense of a great morning daily here is much 
larger than is usually suppoed. The Herald has been 
the most liberal in the getting of news, though of late 
it has grown more economical, regarding some of its 



296 The Great Metropolis. 

past expenditure as wasteful and superfluous. Still, 
whenever important intelligence is to be bad, the 
Herald is more willing than any other journal in the 
country to pay for it. Its daily expenses have been 
estimated at $20,000 a week, sometimes more, some- 
times less; and that is not far from the cost of the 
other quarto morning papers. The Tribune spent 
$969,000 year before last, and cleared only $11,000. 
It would be a fair estimate to reckon the cost of pub- 
lishing one of the3e journals at $800,000 to $1,000,- 
000 per annum. 

The force employed upon one of the quartos is from 
four to five hundred persons, including clerks, com- 
positors, pressmen, feeders^ newsmen, proof-readers, 
reporters and editors. 

Each paper has an editor-in-chief, who dictates the 
course and policy of the paper, and who decides all 
questions having reference to its editorial conduct. 

The next to him in rank is the managing editor, 
who, in the absence of the chief, is supreme, and who 
attends to all the details, the engagement and dis- 
missal of sub-editors and correspondents, with power 
to regulate salaries, and determine character of ser- 
vice. He is responsible to the chief, and his subor- 
dinates are responsible to him. 

The night editor is a very important person. His 
position is arduous and responsible, as he has charge 
of the making-up of the paper, determining what 
matter shall go in and what stay out. He remains at 
his post until the journal is ready to go to press, be- 
tween 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning, generally, 
though he sometimes stays till daylight. He goes 
upon duty at 7 in the evening, so that his hours of 
labor are commonly seven or eight. 



The Daily Press. 297 

The foreign editor deals with the foreign news and 
correspondence ; writes editorials upon European pol- 
itics, and is authority upon all matters belonging to 
his department. He is usually a foreigner himself, and 
conversant with several languages. 

The financial editor is usually independent in his 
place, being, in most cases, a stockholder, or having 
some proprietary interest in the concern. This posi- 
tion is the most sought after of any on a paper, and 
is consequently filled by a man who can command in- 
fluence ; who has means, and is well known in banking 
circles. Financial editors generally name their suc- 
cessors before death or resignation — either of which 
events is improbable — and believe the place too good 
to be permitted to go out of the family. They write 
the daily money articles, and have facilities for pecu- 
niary success that no other journalist in the office has. 
Nearly all of them make money, the amount of their 
salary being of secondary importance. Most of them 
grow rich through certain interests they are allowed 
to cultivate in Wall street. I recall the financial editor 
of a leading daily, who retired after a few years of 
service, with $250,000, all made by his position, and 
another, not long dead, who left a fortune of $300,000. 
To be a money -writer is considered to be on the direct 
road to wealth; and the road is seldom missed. 

The city editor controls the city news. All the re- 
porters are under him. He directs their movements, 
making out every day, in a large book, the places for 
them to go, and the amount of matter they are ex- 
pected to furnish. The managing editor holds him 
responsible for the city department, and he sees that 
the reporters discharge their duty on pain of dis- 
missal. 



298 The Great Metropolis. 

The principal dailies have day editors, who have 
charge of the office during the day ; see visitors in the 
absence of the manager; receive or decline communi- 
cations, and direct the affairs of the office from 9 or 10 
o'clock in the morning, to 5 or 6 in the afternoon. 

The literary editor or reviewer writes the literary 
criticisms ; receives all the new books that are sent to 
the office, and notices them according to their merit or 
demerit. He is an autocrat in his department, and is 
a man of many and varied acquirements, and correct 
and scholarly tastes. George Ripley, of the Tribune 
stands at the head of the reviewers of the City and 
country, by seniority, culture and experience. 

The art, dramatic and musical critics are indispensa- 
ble to a newspaper. Their title implies their office. 
They are supposed to understand thoroughly what 
they write of, and to be in every way competent, 
though between them and the persons criticised, there 
is usually a remarkable difference of opinion. Some 
of them are very accomplished gentlemen, and others 
much less able than they would like to have it sup- 
posed. 

Then there are translators, of course, who speak and 
write French, German, Italian and Spanish. One 
translator I know, is master of twenty different tongues, 
and speaks correctly every language but his own. 
Each large daily has from twelve to thirty reporters. 
Some of them report law cases, police matters and 
fires exclusively; while others devote themselves to 
Brooklyn, Jersey-City, Hoboken, Weehawken, and 
other adjacent towns. The city editor has a number 
of general reporters, some of them stenographers, who 
are assigned by him to duty. Their labors vary from 



The Daily Press. 299 

two to eight hours a day. At times they have very 
light work, and again they toil like beavers. When 
occasion demands, extra reporters, who are always 
numerous, are employed, and are paid for their special 
work. 

The editor-in-chief of the Tribune is, as every one 
knows, Horace Greeley ; and the managing editor — 
he has been less than two years in the position — is 
John Russell Young, formerly of Philadelphia. The 
editor-in-chief of the Herald is, of course, James Gor- 
don Bennett, and the managing editor, James Gordon 
Bennett, jr., when he is in the office; several of the 
other editors supplying his place if absent. Of the 
Times^ Henry J. Raymond is chief, and Stillman S. 
Conant manager ; of the Worlds Manton Marble chief, 
and David G. Croley manager; of the Sun^ Charles 
A. Dana chief, and Isaac W. England manager ; of 
the Journal of Commerce^ David M. Stone chief, and 
J. W. Bouton manager ; of the Evening Post, William 
Cullen Bryant chief, and Augustus Maverick manager ; 
of the Commei'cial Advertiser, Thurlow Weed chief, 
and Chester P. Dewey manager ; of the Evening Ex- 
jpress, James Brooks chief, and Erastus Brooks mana- 
ger. 

Those are all the old papers ; and of the new ones, 
Evening Telegram, Evening Mail, Evening News, Even- 
ing Gommoniuealtli, Democrat and Star, the chief and 
managing editor is generally the same person. They 
are small papers, and their departments less numerous 
and complete than those of the long-established jour- 
nals. 

The press-room of the morning dailies is a great 
curiosity to many persons. They like to see the huge 



300 The Great Metropolis. 

ten-cylinder Hoe press throwing off sheets at the rate 
of 1G,000 an hour, but printing them on only one side 
at a time. The Hoe press, it was supposed, was the 
highest reach of mechanical skill ; but recently a new 
press, the Bullock, has been invented, and threatens to 
displace its rival. The Bullock is very small and com- 
pact ; prints on both sides ; requires but one feeder, 
and saves much expense. The paper is put in in one 
long roll, and the wonderful machine cuts the sheet 
of the right size, and throws it out a perfectly printed 
journal. The Bullock works quite as rapidly as the 
Hoe, and is said to spoil fewer papers. It has £0 many 
advantages over Hoe's, that it ere long promises to 
take its place in most newspaper establishments in this 
country and Europe. 

Ten or twelve years ago, the New- York papers be- 
gan to stereotype their forms, thereby saving the wear 
of the type, and in other ways, fully 20 per cent, upon 
the old plan. Each office has a stereotyping room, 
and the process is as follows. The forms are made up 
on curved plates. When the type is all set, a pulpy 
preparation of paper is pressed upon them, and it is 
of such consistency as to keep the mold of the type 
exactly. Into this mold liquid type metal is poured 
(it does not burn the paper because of its moisture) ; 
and a solid plate formed as if the original type were 
all welded together. This plate is put upon the press, 
and the impressions of the journal made. The forms 
of the Trihuiie, Herald, Times, and recently the Worlds 
are all stereotyped. 

The metropolitan journals, considering the natural 
and acquired advantages they enjoy, are not all they 
OMght to be. And yet, they are as a class, superior to 



The Daily Press. 301 

tliose of any city in Europe. In fact, outside of Lon 
don, and the Times^ they have no rivals there; for the 
Paris, Berlin and other Continental journals, though 
able in some particulars, amount to little as a journal- 
istic whole. 

The London Times has obtained a power and influ- 
ence in Europe that no one journal could obtain in the 
United States. It stands almost entirely alone ; and 
its opinions and predictions are looked to with an in- 
terest, and carry a weight, which we Americans, ac- 
customed to think for ourselves, can hardly understand. 
Its editorials from first to last, are the strongest, clear- 
est, and best written on either side of the Atlantic. 
Those in New- York are often as good, sometimes su- 
perior ; but, on an average, fall below the standard of 
the "Thunderer." 

The leaders of the Times^ with its correspondence 
and parliamentary reports, make up its excellence. 
With all its ability, it is heavy and unenterprising and 
would not be successful in this country, where we de- 
mand more variety and lightness, more humor and 
much more news. 

A defect of the metropolitan dailies is, that they too 
closely imitate the English papers in excess of foreign 
news and overfulness of reports — giving matters really 
of little general interest, to the exclusion of what is 
more important. Americans naturally care far less 
about European affairs than the Europeans themselves ; 
but our daily journals do not seem yet to have dis- 
covered the fact. The result is that we have long 
letters from abroad, often with little mention of the 
condition of things in our home cities and territories. 

Condensation is not one of the journalistic virtues 



502 The Great Metropolis. 

of New- York, especially in telegrams, which every 
day fill several columns, when all they contain might 
better be expressed in one-fourth of the space. 

The use of the telegraph originally was to transmit 
news of importance ; but of late it seems to be to give 
unimportant news significance. That is sent over the 
wires which, but for such sending, would not be printed 
at all. 

It is very common for our night editors to omit an 
item of city news to give space to something much 
less interesting that has been received by telegraph. 
They appear to think it of no consequence that a 
New-Yorker has broken his neck, but of the greatest 
that a laborer on a Western railway or a freedman in 
Texas has been killed by a locomotive or a rufl&an 

When our dailies comprehend that what Americans 
are most interested in is America, we shall be, jour- 
nalistically, much better oif. 

Newspapers seem to imagine themselves as much 
privileged to misrepresent their circulation as fops their 
follies or cowards their courage. Hence it is very 
difficult, if not impossible, to give the exact circulation 
of any daily ; though, inasmuch as I have made dili- 
gent inquiry, and have what should be trustworthy 
sources of information, the figures I give in round num- 
bers ought to be nearly correct. The circulation of 
the best known morning and evening papers I esti- 
mate as follows : 



Herald 


70,000 


Evening Post . . 


9,000 


Sun 


50,000 


Evening Express . 


7,000 


Tribune 


. 40,000 


Evening Mail 


6,000 


Times » 


35,000 


Commercial Adv. 


3,500 


World 


. 25,000 


Journal of Commerce . 


2,500 



The Daily Press. 303 

Of the new papers I have no means of judging. 
The Star (morning), Democrat (morning and evening), 
and the Telegram and News (evening), claim to count 
their circulation by tens of thousands ; while the fig- 
ures of the Commonwealth, also evening, I have not 
heard stated. 

The circulation of the dailies has greatly decreased 
since the close of the War. The leading quartos ran up 
on some days of the Rebellion, when accounts of bat- 
tles were received, to over a hundred thousand, the 
sales even reaching one hundred and fifty thousand in 
twenty-four hours. 

During the present year, the circulation of the Tri- 
hune. Sun and World has gone up more rapidly than 
that of their cotemporaries. The Herald^ increases 
steadily, with occasional fluctuations. 

The Herald much as it is condemned and abused i^ 
on the whole, the most enterprising and best managed 
newspaper in the City. James Gordon Bennett un- 
questionably understands the philosophy of journalism 
and the secret of popularity. Without any particular 
convictions or fixedness of principle himself, he gives 
no one else credit for them ; and therefore thinks the 
best thing is to render his paper acceptable to the 
largest class of people possible. 

That he does without regard to consistency for 
which he has no respect ; and thus freed from the or- 
dinary restraints that develop, but often hinder mortals, 
it is not strange he has achieved great material success. 

Something over thirty- three years ago Bennett, in 
a dingy, subterranean office in Ann street, issued the 
first number of the Herald^ a small, inferior-looking 
sheet, doing all the editorial work with his own hand \ 



304 The Great Metropolis. 

and to-day he has the most wealthy daily in the United 
States. 

The great fire in December, 1835, was fully and 
graphically reported in the Herald^ the first time 
such a thing had ever been done or even attempted, 
in the country ; and the remarkable enterprise of the 
journal on that occasion brought it into general notice, 
and gave it a reputation for news that it has never 
lost. 

Bennett says he publishes the Herald to make money 
(he might have added for his own glorification), not for 
the benefit of philosophers, which is a hit at the Tribune. 
Privately he does not assume to control or mold public 
opinion, but to follow it ; and he generally manages to be 
about twenty-four hours behind it, that he may publicly 
declare he has anticipated and created it. The Herald 
is consistent only in its inconsistency, and its determi- 
nation to be on the strong or popular side of every 
question. By miscalculation or misunderstanding, it 
sometimes gets on the unpopular side ; but, the moment 
it discovers its mistake, it leaps to the other with no- 
ticeable alacrity. 

Bennett understands that a daily newspaper is em- 
phatically a thing of to-day, and that the mass of people 
care very little for what it has sai^ yesterday, or may 
say to-morrow. Consequently, he issues every num- 
ber as if there never had been, and never would be 
another, and so prospers. Its rivals declare the suc- 
cess of the Herald a libel upon the general intelligence. 
Perhaps it is ; but its success, great and growing, is an 
undeniable fact, from which any one may draw his own 
inferences. 

The Herald makes a fea:ture of sensation of some part 



The Daily Press. 305 

of its news every morning ; and, if there be no im- 
portant news, creates its appearance by typographical 
display. Its matter is carelessly prepared, for the 
most part, but altogether acceptable to its readers, and 
therefore what Bennett approves. 

The Sun is the oldest morning paper in town except 
the Journal. It made a good deal of money for its 
original proprietor, Moses Y. Beach. He disposed of 
it eight or ten years ago, and the purchasing parties 
unable to manage it, lost heavily, and were glad to 
sell it to Beach again. The Sun during the Beach 
period was the organ of the workingmen, and the ad- 
vocate of their interests. It was a penny paper until 
the depreciation of the currency made it necessary to 
advance it to two cents. For many years it had the 
largest circulation of any daily in New- York, and may 
have again. 

Last January the Sun was revolutionized by its sale 
to Charles A. Dana, representing a number of wealthy 
stockholders, of whom he is one. It was removed 
from Fulton and Nassau to the reconstructed buildings 
corner of Nassau and Frankfort streets, formerly occu- 
pied as Tammany Hall. The Sun deserves its name ; 
for it has the reputation of the brightest daily in the 
City. It is independent, high-toned, liberal and perfectly 
good-natured. Its editorial corps consists of a num- 
ber of highly cultivated gentlemen and in its freedom 
from bitterness, party rancor and one-sided judgment 
is an example the larger papers might imitate to ad- 
vantage. The Sun abounds in graceful and vigorous 
articles, and is characterized by a playful irony so subtle 
often as to escape detection by many of its readers. 

It adheres to its ancient motto, and " shines for all." 
20 



306 The Great Metropolis. 

It is said to be very prosperous, and it certainly de 
serves all its prosperity. 

The Tribune^ in spite of its crotchets and occasional 
violence, has wielded and still wields a greater influ- 
ence than any other daily in New-York. An anti- 
slavery paper twenty years ago — the cause was most 
unpopular then — it has lived to see the "peculiar in- 
stitution" abolished, and its own principles .triumphant. 

The Tribune is so identified M^ith Horace Greeley, 
that it is difficult to tell what it would be without him. 
He is so intensely personal, and capricious often, that 
he is constantly furnishing clubs to his antagonists to 
strike the causes he defends with such ability and 
earnestness. 

The original stock of the Tribune was a hundred 
shares of a thousand dollars each (Greeley began the 
paper with a thousand dollars of borrowed money) 
and the shares are now worth more than six thousand 
dollars. It has made money, but not nearly so much 
as it ought to have done, the consequence mainly of 
being under the control of a board of free-voiced 
stockholders, who always interfere with the govern- 
ment of a journal. A newspaper should be an autoc- 
racy, and to the fact that the Herald is such, much of its 

success is owing. 

The Tribune is able, probably the ablest daily in the 
City, for it has always had more capacity and culture 
on its staff than any other paper, though it has not al- 
ways used its means or strength wisely. It aims to be 
more a vehicle of opinion than of news, and its edi- 
torials are allowed to crowd out interesting intelligence 
almost every day ; albeit most of its readers would, I 
suspect, prefer facts, which are universal, to leaders 



The Daily Press. 307 

whick are, after all, only the expression of an individ- 
ual. There is no good reason why the Tribune should 
not be the most interesting newspaper as well as the 
ablest journal in the City. Until good old Horace 
Greeley is gathered to his fathers, and some man suc- 
ceeds him who can be made to believe his daily opin- 
ions are not vital to the salvation of the Republic, I 
look for little change in the great radical organ of the 
New World. 

The Times^ which has been accused of political in- 
stability, has shown decided improvement recently, 
and is a very readable paper. Its editorials generally 
are well written, though not so vigorous as those of 
the Tribune. Its correspondence, its news, and its lite- 
rary department are very creditable. It was started 
as a penny paper by the Harpers, and sank $80,000 or 
$90,000 before it began to pay for itself. Since then 
it has been pecuniarily successful ; has been for years a 
stock company, though its shareholders have no voice in 
its direction, which is entirely under the control of 
Raymond, one of the best journalists in the country. 

The World., for the money it spends and the force 
it employs, is probably the best conducted paper here. 
Its political editor and director, Manton Marble, is a 
very forcible and graceful writer, and a shrewd and 
energetic manager. Ultra-democratic in its politics, it 
is a formidable and tireless enemy of the Tribune and 
Times^ and its editorials are not excelled in strength 
and plausibility by any in New- York. It is unquestion- 
ably the best made-up daily in town ; and, though fre- 
quently positive, even to bitterness, it is never weak 
and rarely inconsistent. 

The World was begun as a religious journal, and 



308 The Great Metropolis. 

after various changes, during which it is said to hf^ve 
sunk $300,000 or $400,000, it became the organ of 
the democracy in the Metropolis, especially of the 
Manhattan club, and has long been on a paying basis. 

It imitates the Herald too closely in its news and 
correspondence to be in quite good taste. It is de- 
termined to make the most of what it has, and is so 
wedded to sensation that its chief fault is overdoing. 

The Journal of Commerce is one of the old Wall 
street journals, has retained some of its influence and 
all of its prosperity. It is eminently respectable, and 
well edited, though it does not enter into competition 
with the morning quartos as a newspaper. It is the 
organ of the wholesale merchants and importers, and 
has made a fortune for half a dozen of its proprietors. 
It is the oldest journal in the City, and was, twenty 
years ago, one of the most enterprising. It long ago 
retired into comparative obscurity, contented to re- 
ceive its ample dividends, and leave the strife of jour- 
nalism to younger heads and more ambitious hearts. 

The Star is an offshoot of the old San^ and assumes 
to be its legitimate successor. It was started by seve- 
ral attaches of the Beach journal, and is very much 
what that was in appearance, tone and character. It 
has not yet completed its first year. It began as a 
penny paper, and is now sold for two cents. It does 
not belong to the Associated Press, nor do any of the 
evening journals except those heretofore named. The 
Star is vigilant and persevering in watching the rights 
of labor and laborers, and its future prospects are re- 
ported to be good. 

The Democrat is the new ultra-democratic journal set 
up here a few months since by Mark M. Pomeroy of 



i 



The Daily Press. 309 

the famous La Crosse Democrat First it was an even- 
ing, now it is a morning paper. Its editor and pro- 
prietor claims to have met with remarkable success, 
and to be firmly established in the good will of the 
toiling millions. 

The influence of the evening is naturally much less 
than that of the morning journals ; the Post being 
the ablest and most influential of the entire number. 
It is carefully edited, though its elder and best-known 
conductors spend much of their time in Europe. Its 
columns are fastidiously free from indelicacy or pru- 
riency, and it well deserves to be considered a family 
newspaper. 

The Commercial Advertiser is interesting and new 
life has been given it by Thurlow Weed. Its proprie- 
tors have not shown much disposition to make money. 

The Evening Express is managed with tact and econo- 
my by the Brooks Brothers, who make an excellent 
newspaper and $40,000 a year. 

The Telegram, a kind of evening edition of the 
Herald, is owned by James Gordon Bennett, jr., is 
lively and fall of news, and sold for two cents. 

The Evening News is the property of Benjamin 
Wood, and the only penny paper in town. It seems 
to have a very large circulation, and those who ought 
to know declare it profitable. It is given over to po- 
lice news and every variety of crime, and no doubt 
suits its readers exactly. 

The Evening Commonwealth is but five or six nionths 
old, a Republican two-cent paper, very dignified and 
conscientious, though not so vivacious or forcible as it 
might be. It is said to be gradually but steadily ere p- 
ins: into favor. 



310 The Great Metropolis. 

There are three German morning dailies; State 
Gazette, Democrat, and Journal, and one German even- 
ing paper, the Times. There are two French morning 
journals, the Courier of the United States and the 
Franco- American Messenger j and these end the list of 
the dailies in the Metropolis. 

There never has been a time when the City had so 
many evening papers; and it is probable they will in- 
terfere with each other so strongly that some of them 
must yield to the struggle for existence before long, 
and go down to early, though not unlamented graves. 



CHAPTER XXXIY. 
THE WEEKLY PRESS. 

Few persons who live out of, oi* even in, New- York 
are aware of the number of weekly papers published 
in the City: indeed, I venture to say no journalist 
here can name half of them. They are devoted not 
only to news, literature, agriculture, amusements, art, 
music and crime, but to various interests and kinds of 
business, and, all told, amount to about one hundred 
and fifty. Among the secular weeklies, the best known 
are Harpers' Weekly^ Harpers^ Bazaar^ Frank Leslie's 
Illustrated News, Round Table, Nation, Ledger, Citizen, 
Home Journal, Leader, Weekly Review, Sunday Mer- 
cury, Sunday News, IDispatch, Sunday Times, Literary 
Album, Anti-Slavery Standard, Revolution, Clipper^ 
Spirit of the Times, and Police Gazette. Of the re- 
ligious press, the Independent, Examiner, Evangelist, 
Methodist, Observer, Tablet, Liberal Christian, Chris- 
tian Advocate, Christian Inquirer^ and Church Journal 
are most prominent. 

The Ledger is the most popular of the weeklies, 
having at present a circulation of over three hundred 
thousand. Robert Bonner, the proprietor, was at one 
time a poor printer-boy, who made his journal famous, 
and the source of a large fortune, by extremely lib- 



312 The Great Metropolis. 

eral advertising. It is a story-paper, and one of the 
very best of its kind. Bonner employs the best talent 
he can command, particularly the celebrities, at mu- 
nificent rates. Almost every writer in the country has 
either contributed, or thought of contributing, to the 
Ledger, at his own prices. Henry Ward Beecher's 
''Norwood" was a good acquisition to the Ledger, in- 
creasing its circulation fully one hundred thousand. 

Bonner may sometime engage Louis Napoleon, Gar- 
ibaldi, the Tycoon of Japan and Pio Nono, for his 
thought by day, his dream by night is whom he shall 
next secure as a contributor to the Ledger. 

The majority of the paper's readers are women and 
young people — it is intended for a fiimily journal, — 
though many men of culture con its columns reg- 
ularly. 

All newspaper publishers owe a debt of gratitude 
to Bonner, inasmuch as his eminent success is the 
strongest evidence of the advantage of advertising. 

The illustrated papers number a dozen, probably ; 
the best being Harpers' Weekly, the Bazaar and Frank 
Leslie's. Harpers' publications rank highest, especially 
in the literary department, and have the largest circu- 
lation. The WeeJclg and Bazaar claim a circulation of 
over one hundred thousand each, while Leslie's is 
about sixty or seventy thousand. Both have made a 
great deal of money, and every year adds to their 
profits. 

The Bound Table and Nation are, as literary and 
critical journals, the ablest in the country; in fact, 
almost the only ones that hold any rank or deserve 
any reputation. The Bound Table has more piquancy 
and variety, the Nation more force and solidity. Both 



The Weekly Press. 313 

have had a hard struorsrle, but are now said to be on a 
sound and paying basis. They employ some of the 
ablest pens in the Metropolis and New-England, and 
are edited with conscientious tact and zeal. 

The Revolution^ published and edited by Susan B. 
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is an able and 
energetic exponent of women's rights, and radical on 
all subjects. It is too ultra for most people ; but it is, 
no doubt, doing a needful work by elevating the char- 
acter and stimulating the independence of women. 

The religious papers are published in the interest 
of the different sects, and, very naturally, each is the 
favorite of the church it represents. The Independent 
is the most independent in character as well as in name, 
and the most profitable. It is published by Henry 
C. Bowen, formerly a Broadway merchant, and is said 
to yield him $50,000 to $60,000 a year. Theodore 
Tilton is its principal editor, at a salary of $7,000 a 
year — one of the highest paid in New- York. The 
Methodist^ Observer^ Examiner and Liberal Christian 
are the ablest, and make the largest returns to the 
proprietors. 

The Citizen gained considerable reputation through 
its late editor, General Charles G. Halpine, better 
known as "Miles O'Reilly." He was a clever, rollick- 
ing, careless, good-hearted Irishman, a kind of scrib- 
bling Dugald Dalgetty, who had the knack of flat- 
tering people into good humor with themselves and 
good feeling for him. He obtained his first notoriety 
by a series of adroit and ludicrous tricks, and was 
elected to a municipal office, worth $40,000 a year, 
which he held at the time of his sudden death. 

The Citizen is often aromatic and generally read- 



314 The Great Metrgpoli:?. 

able. Its circulation is not large, but, as it lias the 
City printing, it is, no doubt on a firm financial foun- 
dation. It is half political, half literary, and seems to 
flourish. 

The Home Journal has manifested more signs of 
life since the death of N. P. Willis, with whom it was 
for many years identified. It claims to be an elegant 
journal of polite society, and has recently wrought 
the Jenkins vein to advantage. The latest follies of 
Fifth avenue are always chronicled with fervor and 
fidelity in its columns. 

The Sunday papers, such as the Mercury^ Neivs and 
Police Gazette^ are sensation journals of a curious sort, 
to which a murder is a benison, and an intrigue a 
godsend. They deal with what the dailies will not 
mention, or print in brief, enlarging with keen relish 
and elaborate pruriency upon details that delicacy 
would eschew. 

They reprint all the sensational facts and gossip they 
can find in the country press, or exhume from the 
licentious haunts of the City. They are widely read, 
of course, and are, for the most part, profitable. The 
better class of the community do not read them, unless 
they happen to contain something extraordinary racy 
and wanton, when curiosity overcomes the scruples of 
conscience and the dictates of decorum. 

Another class of weeklies are those styled literary, 
which publish highly-colored stories, with absurd inci- 
dents and impossible characters of the Rinaldo Rinal- 
dini, and Alonzo and Melissa class. No educated 
person would believe a market for such matter could 
be found; and yet publications like the Literary Al- 
hum and New York Weekly have a circulation of 



The Weekly Press. 315 

seventy or eighty thousand, and make their proprietors 
rich. It costs little to print them ; the original stories 
being written by some impecunious hack, at the rate 
of one or two dollars a column, and the slender edito- 
rial compounded with paste and scissors. Such jour- 
nals are circulated almost entirely in the country, few 
persons in the City being aware of their existence. 

The worst class of weeklies are the Police Gazette 
and the publications devoted to prize-fighting, criminal 
news and flash intelligence. They are abominably 
written, and illustrated with hideous cuts, enough to 
frighten Ajax or Diomede, and are read with avidity 
in Greene, Mercer, Water and Houston streets. Bar- 
rooms and bagnios, gambling saloons and rat- pits pat- 
ronize them, and consider tliem the most entertaining 
and instructive journals in the World. 

The profession of journalism, though possessed of a 
strange species of fascination, which holds those once 
embarked in it, and draws back to it the men who 
have endeavored to escape, is, considering the culture, 
training and devotion it requires, the least remunera- 
tive of callings. 

Journalists who follow their profession zealously for 
years, find, after they have worn themselves out in its 
arduous service, that their prospects are no better than 
when they began. They have not saved more than 
enough to meet their daily expenses, and, when they 
can no longer work, they are set aside as of no further 
use, and fresh and younger put in their place. Repub- 
lics may be ungrateful, but they are far less so than 
newspaper publishers, for the most part men of money 
rather than culture, without sympathy with those who 
toil their lives out for a salary hardly equal to that of 
a good mechanic or an accomplished cook. 



316 The Great Metropolis. 

Any otlier business, faithfully followed, gains in 
value with years ; and he who retires from it can sell 
its good will for a bonus. The bonus of not a few im- 
provident journalists has been a legacy of unpaid 
debts, and a funeral at the expense of tTieir friends. 

Journalists in the Metropolis are more poorly 2:;aid, 
strange to say, than in many of the other and smaller 
cities. The best of them, those of large experience 
and long service, rarely receive more than $30 or $40 
a week ; while the price for reporters is $15 to $25 — 
seldom the latter. 

A few men are compensated liberally ; but they are 
well known, and are generally paid for their reputa- 
tion, or because they have proprietary interests in the 
concern to which they belong. Frederick Hudson, for- 
merly managing editor of the Herald., received $10,- 
000 a year ; but he had grown up with the concern, 
and he broke his constitution by his ceaseless toil. 
Horace Greeley's salary is $7,500 as editor-in-chief of 
the Tribune j but he is its founder and a large stock- 
holder, and has a national and trans-Atlantic reputa- 
tion. The managing editor of the Tribune has $5,000 ; 
but it is not two years since the salary was raised to 
that figure ; and those who know anything of the mode 
in which a man in such a position in a stock concern is 
badgered and bedeviled, will willingly testify that 
the price is not extraordinary. 

Most of the New- York sub-journalists are compelled, 
so great is the price of living, and such the smallness of 
their pay here, to do outside work to make both ends 
meet. When one has to pay $2,000 for a respectable 
house to live in, and gets but $1,400 to $1,500 for his 
services, the need of increased exertion, especially if 



The Weekly Press. 317 

he has a large family, is not altogether undiscernable. 
In consequence, if he is clever, he makes a sort of 
galley-slave of himself, and does the labor of three or 
four ordinary men. He contributes to the magazines 
or weeklies ; corresponds for the country press ; reads 
for the book-publishers ; translates from the German or 
French the noticeable works in those languages, and 
fills up his leisure hours by writing a comedy or a 
novel, for which he receives a few hundred dollars and 
all kinds of abuse. 

The New- York journalist is fortunate if he has the 
ability and industry to do all this, and more fortunate 
if he has the opportunity ; for the Metropolis is over- 
crowded with writers of every description, impecuni- 
ous litterateurs^ broken-down scribblers, and unsuc- 
cessful authors. 

You can engage men here to compose an epic, a 
tragedy, or a romance ; indite an ode, a sonnet, or a 
madrigal; waste ink and paper on any subject, for 
much less than you could an attorney's clerk to copy 
the same things. Talent, learning, and even genius, 
if you will permit the great unappreciated to place 
their own estimate upon themselves, are more common 
here than scandal in boarding-houses, or bad morals in 
French novels. 

At any rate, the supply of writers of ability and 
culture, is much greater here than the demand ; and 
there is no commoner mistake than for young men who 
have a suspicion, shared by few others, that they are 
among the intellectually elect, to imagine New- York 
needs them, and is suffering from their absence. If any 
such are doing well where they are, there let them 
remain. 



318 The Great Metropolis. 

This great City is overcrowded, overburtliened, 
over-supplied. There are vain and egotistic dullards 
enough here now, ill-fated fellows who live by wits 
none too bright before they were overstrained, and 
"who will go down to their graves with the conviction 
that the World would not recognize their gifts. Do 
not increase the number, my self-sufl5cient brothers of 
the quill. Stay at home, and go to Heaven in your 
own quiet way ; and remember that he who tells you 
so speaks by the card, and styles himself, with the char- 
acteristic egotism of his egotistic class, sometimes Sir 
Oracle, and sometimes yours truly. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 
WILLIAM B. ASTOR. 

William B. Astor is a very noticeable exception to 
the rule that the sons of rich men squander what their 
fathers spent their lives in earning. Economy and 
thrift are hereditary virtues in the Astors, and the 
immense wealth that old John Jacob accumulated is 
likely to remain in the family for generations. 

William B. Astor's life is little, but his property is 
great. His chief distinction is that he is John Jacob 
Astor's son. As such he is known ; as such he will 
be remembered. If it require, as has been claimed, as 
much capacity to take care of money as to make it, 
then the son is equal to the father. William B. has 
been preserved by his temperament from all extrava- 
gances and excesses. He has the cool head and calm 
blood of his German ancestors, to whom irregularity 
was unknown and temptation impossible. 

Associated in business with his father from his early 
years, he learned his habits and followed his example. 
The power and benefit of money being one of the first 
things he was taught, it is not strange he has remem- 
bered his early lesson through all his years. Instead 
of diminishing the wealth he inherited, he has largely 
increased it, and has been for years the richest citizen 
of the United States. He is as careful of his vast 



320 The Great Metropolis. 

property as if he were not worth a hundred dollars ; 
and to-day, in his seventy-sixth year, he takes more 
note of a trifling expenditure than a clerk whose an- 
nual salary is not much beyond his hourly income. 

Every one knows how John Jacob Astor, at the age 
of twenty, left his village home in Baden, so poor that 
he v/alked to the nearest seaport, with a small bundle, 
containing all his worldly goods ; spent his last penny 
for a passage in the steerage ; sailed for New-York 
and would have arrived here with nothing but youth 
and health, had he not sold on the voyage half a dozen 
flutes given him by his brother in London. For the 
flutes he received twelve dollars, and having made the 
acquaintance of a furrier on board the ship, and talked 
with him about the trade, he invested his small capital, 
on debarking, in furs. From that small beginning he 
steadily and rapidly rose, until he founded the Ameri- 
can Fur Company, sent his ships to every sea, and 
died worth $50,000,000. 

But few know how William, the son, has, during 
the twenty years since his father's death, devoted him- 
self constantly to swell the fortune, whose income is 
more than any one man should have. He has little 
life outside of his mortgages and investments, and at 
an age when most good citizens are sleeping quietly in 
their graves, indifferent to securities or titles, he is 
hard at work in his back oflice closing every crevice 
through which a dollar might slip. 

Many persons wonder why men of great fortune 
continue to labor, instead of resting and enjoying them- 
selves, and attribute it to mere love of gain. They do 
not remember that long habit becomes second nature ; 
that such men find rest in constant occupation, and 



William B. AstoR. 321 

that tlie enjoyment prescribed for them would be the 
severest punishment that could be inflicted. 

For more than fifty years William B. Astor has been 
a daily worker at his desk. Sentence him to idleness 
to-morrow, and before the Christmas chimes were rung 
from Trinity, the family lot in Greenwood would have 
another occupant. 

Astor was born in a small brick house, built by his 
father, and occupied as a fur store, but long since torn 
down, at the corner of Broadway and Vesey — the site 
of the present Astor House. He has seen wonderful 
changes in the City and the World. When he was a 
babe New-York had a population of not more than 
thirt}^ thousand souls; our Revolution had just ended ; 
George Washington was still alive ; Thomas Jefferson 
was President of the United States ; Bonaparte was un- 
known ; Frederic the Great had very recently died; the 
French Revolution was thrilling the time with horror ; 
Vesey street was in the country ; Bowling Green the 
centre of trade ; Wall street and its vicinity the quar- 
ter for fashionable residences, and the Republic itself 
a handful of feeble States that were still suffering from 
the struggle that had given them their independence. 

Astor was carefully educated by his father, and after 
leaving college, traveled in Europe, where, it is said, 
he spent less than a quarter of what his parent had al- 
lowed him. After his return he went into business 
with John Jacob, and became more watchful of his in- 
terests and his money than the old man himself, who 
was never accused of any extraordinary carelessness 
in that respect. Though presumptive heir to a great 
estate he lost no opportunity to look out for himself, 
and, at his father's decease, was individually worth 

21 



322 The Great Metropolis. » 

$6,000,000. He is declared, by those who ought to 
know, to be less liberal than his father — no spendthrift 
by any means — and a man of less kindly feeling and 
less generous sympathy. He is reported to be very 
charitable on occasions ; but he rarely gives to those 
who solicit charity, and his brusque refusal of the con- 
stant petitioners for assistance of all kinds through a 
series of years has earned for him the reputation of ex- 
treme closeness, if not penuriousness. To common 
beggars and seekers for subscriptions he turns a deaf 
ear, and the fact is now so well known that he escapes 
much of the annoyance to which accessible rich men 
arc perpetually subjected. He makes it a rule, I have 
been told, never to give anything during the hours of 
business, and always to investigate any and every 
case earnestly brought to his notice. If he finds it 
worthy, he is reasonably liberal, but privately so, hav- 
ing no ambition to gain a reputation that would prove 
troublesome, not to say expensive. 

I have no reason to doubt this ; indeed I am inclined 
to believe it; for many persons give from their vanity, 
while others who are silently charitable pass for the 
very opposite in public opinion. 

Still Astor cannot be regarded as a liberal man, 
considering his immense wealth and the superabund- 
ant opportunities it gives him for doing good in his 
native city, where the Greeks are ever at his own door. 
Of course he has a perfect right to do as he chooses 
with his own. He knows that, too, and follows his 
humor. 

The public is very exacting of the wealthy, who 
are roundly abused when they decline to open their 
purses as it directs. They are so besieged and bad- 



William B. Astor. 323 

gered with applicants and applications, so imposed on 
and cajoled, that it is not strange they grow callous. 
Even Astor and Stewart, if they responded to all the 
calls upon them for aid, would be beggared in a 
twelvemonth. But there is so little probability of 
their responding that it is not needful to expend any 
sympathy in anticipation. 

Astor's office is in Prince street near Broadway, a 
one-story brick, with heavy shutters, reminding you of 
a village bank. The office has two rooms, and he oc« 
cupies the rear one, very plainly, even meagerly, fur- 
nished, which he enters punctually every morning at 
ten o'clock, rarely leaving his desk before four in the 
afternoon. He is not shut away as Stewart is. His 
back can be seen by any one entering the office, and 
any one can step in and see his face also, if he be so 
minded. To those who pay him a visit he is so chary 
of words as to seem impolite. 

He usually waits to be addressed, but if he is not, he 
turns a cold face upon the visitor, and says, "Your 
business, sir." 

If it be an application for charity, in nine cases out 
of ten he cuts off the story before it is half told, with 
" I can do nothing for you, sir," and resumes his work. 

If it is an application for reduction of rent or for 
the sale of property, he generally answers " No, sir," 
and relapses into silence, from which it is difficult to 
arouse him. 

If he is annoyed by further speech, he says curtly: 
"I am bus}' : I have no time to talk;" and there the 
interview ends. Few persons feel encouraged to stay 
in his presence, which to strangers, is no more invit- 
ing than the Morgue at midnight, or a tombstone on a 
Winter's day. 



324 The Great Metropolis. 

Astor has none of his father's liking for trade. He 
deals altogether in real estate and in leases of property 
owned by Trinity Church. He has a wonderful mem- 
ory. He can tell every square foot of property he 
owns, the exact date at which each lease expires, and 
the amount due on it to a penny. He very rarely sells 
any of his property ; but he is buying constantly, and 
will be to his dying day, though it cannot be many 
years before he will be obliged to exchange all his 
valuable sites and acres for a three-by-seven lot in a 
corner of Long Island. He scarcely ever improves 
any of his real estate. He buys it for an advance, and 
lets it go only when he thinks it has reached its max- 
imum rate. 

Astor lives at No. 32 Lafayette place, in a handsome 
though somewhat old-fashioned, brick house, adjoining 
the Astor Library. His residence was built for and 
given to him by his father. Most fashionable and 
wealthy people have moved up town, but he is con- 
servative, averse to change, and will breathe his last 
under that roof He is temperate in all things, and has 
always taken excellent care of his health. He likes a 
good dinner however, and a bottle of wine, and sits 
long at table. His is not a very sociable or gregarious 
nature, but he gives elaborate dinner parties, and often 
has company at his house. As an entertainer few sur- 
pass him. On a social occasion his plate is the most 
massive, his viands the costliest, and his wines the 
richest to be found in New- York. 

He is very fond of walking, going from his home to 
his office and back almost invariably on foot. He is 
a tall man, fully six feet, of heavy frame, large and 
rather coarse features, small eyes, cold and sluggish- 



William B. Astor. 325 

looking, much more German than American, nothing 
distinguished or noticeable about him, whom no one 
would suppose as old as he is by at least fifteen years. 
He has a strong constitution and is in vigorous health, 
and may see his hundredth birthday. He has 
two sons, John Jacob and William B. Astor, Jr., 
both of whom are as close applicants to business as 
their father, and several daughters, all married to 
wealthy gentlemen. Mrs. Astor who is the daughter 
of General Armstrong, James Madison's Secretary of 
War, is a woman of culture and accomplishments, and 
lends grace and dignity to her husband's hospitality. 

William B. Astor's wealth cannot be accurately de- 
termined. He does not know himself ; but it is 
probably $65,000,000, or $70,000,000, perhaps $80,- 
000,000 or $90,000,000. It increases largely every 
year by reason of the advance in property, and may 
nearly double in value before his death. His income 
is greatly disproportioned to his fortune, because he 
owns such a large amount of unproductive real estate. 
He has much property that even his sons know nothing 
of, and, like his father, seems unwilling to have any one 
understand the immensity of his riches. It is said 
he is very anxious to live to see how many of his in- 
vestments will turn out; but at seventy-six that 
rare pleasure can not be much longer enjoyed. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 
THE CONCERT-SALOONS. 

Concert-saloons, with pretty "waiter-girl" attacli- 
ments, which have of late years become so discreditably 
popular in the various cities of the Union, had their 
origin and earliest impetus here. They are particu- 
larly adapted to the large, loose, fluctuating, cosmopo- 
litan life of New- York, and represent in a strikingly 
unfavorable light some of the worst elements in the 
great commercial and social centre of the Republic. 

During the present year, the concert-saloons have 
perceptibly diminished in the City, though there are 
yet many more than any one would suppose the idle 
and profligate among the million and a half of people 
in this vicinity would or could support. It is but a 
few years since the first concert-saloons were opened 
in Broadway and the Bowery, and they at once found 
patrons innumerable. Their illuminated transparen- 
cies, their tawdry display, their jangling music, their 
painted and bedizened wantons — such is public taste 
—made them immediate pecuniary successes. Their 
bad example was contagious. They sprang up, im- 
moral mushroons, all over town ; and, in less than twelve 
months from the time the first one showed its hydra 
bead, four or five hundred of the establishments assist- 



The Concert-Saloons. 327 

ed to corrupt the most frequented quarters of tlie Me- 
tropolis. 

Their number has been as high as six hundred, and 
they have given degraded and degrading employment 
to three or four thousand young women. 

Since the passage of the Excise Law, many of the 
concert-saloons have closed; but a large number re- 
main open, pretending to sell nothing but "temper- 
ance drinks," — thereby escaping the clause that forbids 
the granting of license to dispose of spirituous or malt 
liquors. Even this assumed restriction is one of the 
moral spasms with which New- York is periodically 
visited, and which usually react for the worse. It has 
no other effect than to draw the curtain before evils 
that will not be repressed, and to add to other vices 
the compulsory one of hypocrisy. 

The patrons of concert-saloons are mainly strangers, 
— country people, as it is the fashion here to call all 
persons living outside of New- York, — though not a few 
of our resident citizens contribute to their support in 
more ways than one. One would suppose that the 
customers of the saloons were very young men, mere 
boys, whose follies and foibles are to be leniently re- 
garded on accountof their immaturity and inexperience. 
It is not so, however. Men of middle and old age are 
often found among the regular attendants, and the 
most devoted admirers of the unchaste nymphs who 
pour libations to Venus and Bacchus from the same 
satyr-shaped chalice. 

Men from every grade of life visit the concert-sa- 
loons: many from curiosity, and more from a relish of 
what they find there. The laborer and mechanic, the 
salesman and accountant, the bank-clerk and merchant, 



328 The Great Metropolis. 

all meet in tlie subterranean dens, and guzzle in secret 
lager-beer and poisonous liquors, and philander with 
the libidinous Hebes with a zest that is surprising. 

The concert-saloons differ in their size and appoint- 
ments, as much as they do in the appearance of the 
attendants and the character of the habitues,. Some of 
them, like the Louvre and Oriental, are handsomely 
fitted up and furnished, and have a certain kind of 
order and decorum. The waiter-girls are gaudily at- 
tired, and have some pretensions to comeliness and 
propriety of conduct. The masculine visitors are of 
the best species of patrons of such places — generally 
sober, well-dressed, and tolerably well-behaved. The 
first-class saloons are in Broadway, albeit many of them 
in that great thoroughfare are of a very degraded 
kind; but the worst are in William street, Chatham 
street and the Bowery. 

The latter description discard the form of decency 
to a great extent. The men swear and talk obscenely 
in loud voices; drink to excess; leer, and roa]', and 
stagger, and bestow rude caresses on the women, and 
are thrust violently into the street when they have lost 
their senses and spent their money. The women are 
coarse and sensual in form and feature, lascivious in 
conduct, rude and harsh of speech, degraded in feeling, 
outcast in society. The proprietors are generally be- 
sotted ruffians, doomed to die in a drunken fit or a 
drunken brawl, — fellows conceived in sin, reared in 
iniquity, and predestined to the penitentiaries. 

The concert-soloons do little, and expect to do little, 
during the day. At night is their harvest ; and all the 
poetry of the night is needed to relieve the excessive 
prose of such haunts and habits. When the gas flares, 



The Concert-Saloons. 329 

and the tinsel glitters, and the paint hides, and the 
chemical decoctions sensualize and stupefy, vice is 
robbed of half its grossness, and delicacy and reason 
of all their instincts. 

Soon after the great stores of Broadway are closed 
and bolted; when down-town is partially deserted; 
when New- York has dined, and is determining how to 
pass the evening most pleasantly, the concert-saloons 
reveal their fascinations for the idle and unwary. Then 
the transparencies blaze, and large black and red let- 
ters inform promenaders and loungers where fine mu- 
sical entertainments may be had gratis; where the 
prettiest waiter-girls in the City may be seen ; where 
the greatest and cheapest pleasure may be enjoyed. 

Up from basements that have been quiet and unob- 
served all day long come the sound of boisterous 
music, and the noise of many voices, too loud for 
gayety and too discordant for sobriety. If you have 
nothing to do — for leisure is the parent of mischief — 
or if you are a stranger, you feel an idle curiosity to 
look into the underground abode; and you do, pro- 
bably. 

You descend the steps, and are in a vast hall filled 
with small tables, at which men and women are seated, 
chattering like monkeys and drinking like doves. On 
one side of the room is a bar, behind which half a 
dozen or more bar-keepers are filling the orders of the 
waiter-girls with careless celerity. On a raised plat- 
form at the lower end of the hall is a group of musi- 
cians, playing vociferously out of tune, and fortifying 
their wasted powers with frequent fluids. 

Throughout the place is a rattling of glasses, a chaos 
of voices, a cloud of tobacco smoke, an odor of bad 



330 The Great Metropolis. i 

beer, a discord of instruments, with a sense of heat, 
impurity and debauchery, that repels and shocks you 
at first. 

If this do not drive you out at once, you gradually 
become accustomed to it. One of the waiter-girls — • 
what bitter irony it is to call most of them "pretty !" — 
approaches, and proffers her services. She tells you 
that so good-looking and nice a gentleman ought not 
to be alone, or go without a drink ; informs you she 
will take something with you, and keep you company. 

Without more w^ords, she brings fi'om the bar a glass 
of beer or liquor, and places herself at your side; asks 
you if you like women ; invites you to visit her when 
she is at home; perhaps grants you permission to es- 
cort her from the saloon — though, if she do this, you 
may conclude you have a verdant and rustic air, and 
do not seem a bit like a New-Yorker. 

If the experience be new, you may wish to see what 
will come of it all. You drink the contents of the 
glass before you, and call for a cigar. Then you have 
another drink, and another, and another. The nepen- 
the that the wife of Thone gave to Jove-born Helena 
seems in the glass. Everything is metamorphosed as 
if you had been reading Ovid. The scene of repul- 
sion is replaced by one of attraction, almost of fascina-^ 
tion. 

The music is no longer strident and odious. The 
tones of your attendant Circe change. They appear 
soft, and low, and sweet; and her once harsh face 
grows lovely in the glamour before your eyes. The 
tawdry hall becomes a place of enchantment. You 
wonder you did not visit long before such a palace of 
delights. You call for more liquor. You sing; you 



The Concert Saloons. 331 

dance ; you are tappy. You whisper tenderly to the 
nymph at your side, as if she were Urania and you 
Strephon, in the midst of a new Arcadia. Then ob- 
jects and sounds grow confused. There is a floating, 
swimming motion before your eyes, a feehng of irre- 
sistible drowsiness and languor, and soon complete 
oblivion. 

Your consciousness is restored ; and there is a vio- 
lent pain in your head, and a burning heat in your 
throat. You have no idea where you are, or what has 
passed, or how much time has sped since you lost your 
reason and your senses. You may lie in the station- 
house, or in your own room, or in a strange one, of 
which I will not tell, because I know you would not 
like to tell yourself 

When you rise, and look about you, you find you 
have no money. Your foolish experience has cost you 
something ; but you have learned your lesson cheaply 
if you will only profit by it. You are repentant, as 
punished men always are; and you walk confusedly 
into the street, if you happen to be at liberty, with all 
your future compassed by a bottle of Seltzer water. 

At some of the saloons — the very lowest — customers 
are systematically robbed, and beaten if they resist. 
But generally, at such places, their drink is drugged, 
and they are non-combative victims. At the best of 
the saloons, you are defrauded of your change, unless 
you be on the alert, and every effort is made by the 
waiter-girls to render you intemperate in passion as 
well as thirst. You cannot go often to the best con- 
ducted music-halls without a diminution of your self- 
esteem which makes temptation strong and seduction 
easy. 



332 The Great Metropolis. 

The waiter-girls are more to be pitied than despised. 
They are frequently drawn to this vocation by lack of 
employment, and the impossibility of obtaining it else- 
where. They come mostly from the country, and are 
often virtuous when they enter the saloons. But they 
cannot continue so. The strongest of our sex, and the 
purest of theirs cannot resist temptation and circum- 
stance beyond a certain point. And how can they, 
with nothing to restrain and everything to compel 
them? 

Yet the waiter-girls have virtues, if not the (consid- 
ered) cardinal one. Strange anomaly to those who do 
not understand what a mixture of good and evil hu- 
man nature is, waiter-girls not seldom support aged 
mothers, and educate younger brothers and sisters, by 
the wages of sin and the saloons. 

They have aspirations, doubtless, for a better life, — 
for a higher sphere. But the World frowns, and So- 
ciety rejects them. They could not do otherwise if 
they would. So they must wait until the grave makes 
all things even by making all things forgotten. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 
CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 

Men like Stewart, Astor and Yanderbilt, who either 
make or manage great fortunes, are little inclined to 
sentiment, and, therefore, rarely popular. Such men 
are doers, not sayers, and speech attracts more than 
conduct. They are so practical of necessity, so ab- 
sorbed in their own affairs, that they have little time 
or sympathy to give to the great mass that does not in 
any way affect their interests. 

Cornelius Yanderbilt is a man of power, unques- 
tionably. Many fear, but few love him ; nor has his 
course been such as to endear him to any very largo 
number of people. Through nearly half a century he 
has employed his extraordinary energy, tact and man- 
aging force to the advancement of his own pecuniary 
interests, never slacking exertion or sparing toil in tha 
accumulation of a colossal fortune, whose income he 
cannot and will not use. 

Cornelius Yanderbilt is, as his name indicates, a de- 
scendant of the early Dutch settlers, and inherits from 
them the industry and thrift that have been large- 
ly instrumental in securing him his superabundant 
riches. He is altogether a self-made man, his origin 
being humble and his education neglected. He was 



334 The Great Metropolis. 

born in 1794, on Staten Island, his father being a 
farmer, who tilled a lot of ground for the purpose of 
supplying the New- York market — an undertaking in 
which he thrived. The elder Vanderbilt, in carrying 
his products to the City, began to take passengers who 
had no boats of their own, and in due season became 
a regular ferryman. His perriauger made one round 
trip a day, and he prospered more by it than by his 
farming. 

To the ferry between the island and New- York, 
Cornelius succeeded at the age of sixteen, having 
shown such a marked and unconquerable dislike of 
books and the restraints of school, that his parents de- 
spaired of his education. He was ignorant of the 
common rudiments, and was unable to determine, in 
his twentieth year, whether his name should be spelled 
with a W or a y. He had an instinct, however, for 
arithmetic and calculation, and knew what a dollar 
stood for as well as any boy in the country. He was 
soon the owner of a perriauger himself, and developed 
a remarkable capacity to make money, which has 
grown with his growth and strengthened with his 
strength. He proved himself an excellent judge of 
human nature, too, so far as trades and bargains were 
concerned, and beyond that he cared nothing for it 
In his eighteenth year he was the owner of one of the 
largest perriaugers about New- York, and during the 
war of 1812 he was active in furnishing, at night, the 
forts near the City with supplies. He was resolute and 
courageous, rarely failing, it is said, to keep his given 
word, or to execute any commission, however hazard- 
ous, he had agreed to perform. 

In his nineteenth year he married Sophia Johnson 



Cornelius Vanderbilt. 335 

- — his wife died very recently — of Port Richmond, 
Staten island, and removed a few months after to this 
City. 

At the age of twenty- three he had saved $10,000, 
considered a handsome sum in those days, but which 
he regarded merely as a basis for future operations. 
Perceiving the great advantage that must result to 
commerce from steam power, which had been recently 
applied to navigation, he entered the service of Thomas 
Gibbons, a wealthy New- York capitalist, then engaged 
in transporting passengers between here and Philadel- 
phia. He remained with Gibbons twelve years, and 
manifested such shrewdness and energy — successfully 
evading the act of the Legislature forbidding any ves- 
sel to enter the waters of the State without license, on 
the pain of forfeiture — that the capitalist was unwilling 
to dispense with his invaluable assistance. Vanderbilt 
wished to be his own master again, especially as he 
had obtained a practical knowledge of steam naviga- 
tion, which he was confident he could turn to most 
profitable account. For the next twenty-five years he 
did little else than build steamboats and steamships, 
and always succeeded by having better and faster and 
cheaper lines than his competitors. The accommoda- 
tion of the public was always made subservient to the 
interest of Vanderbilt, and always will be; for he 
makes no secret of the fact that he is his own — I will 
not say only — best friend. 

In 1850 he established a rival line of steamships to 
California, by way of Nicaragua ; sold it out to advan- 
tage three years afterwards, to the Transit Company, 
and became the president of the company in 1856. 
In 1855 he went to Europe with his family, in hia 



336 The Great Metropolis. 

own steamship, the North Star — the first fitted with a 
beam engine that ever crossed the Atlantic — and at- 
tracted much attention by the novelty of the expedi- 
tion. After his return he built a number of ocean 
steamers to run between New-York and Liverpool, 
having received a contract to carry the mails between 
the two countries. One of the vessels, the Vander- 
bilt, made the fastest time ever made, and, during the 
War, he presented it — it cost $800,000 — to the Gov- 
ernment as an addition to the navy. The act was offi- 
cially recognized by Congress, and is 7ery noticeable 
as something the " Commodore" was not expected to 
do. He has been in the habit of supervising all the 
work he orders, even to the minutest details, and never 
accepting anything that does not suit him. He has 
built and owned more than a hundred vessels, and not 
one of them has been lost by accident, it is said, which 
may be the reason of his constant unwillingness to in- 
sure his property. 

For the past few years Vanderbilt has turned his at- 
tention to railways, and has shown himself as admira- 
ble a manager on land as on water. He obtained 
possession of the Harlem in 1864, and from a merely 
fancy stock, paying no dividends, it has been made 
very profitable. He gained control of the Hudson 
River and of the New-York Central also, and has for 
months been striving to get hold of the Erie. No 
doubt it would be for the interest of the stockholders 
that he should ; but the public, who have no reason to 
like him, are opposed to his monopolizing all the rail- 
ways leading out of the City, which is evidently his 
ambition. He will be master of the Erie ere long, 
though, and his numerous enemies can console them- 



Cornelius Vanderbilt. 337 

selves with the utterance of the Congressman who 
thanked God that men couldn't live more than a hun- 
dred years ; that if they could, such fellows as Van- 
derbilt would own the whole World. Before another 
twelve months he will, probably, control railway lines 
representing an invested capital of $100,000,000. 

No one knows how much Vanderbilt is worth, but 
his fortune is probably not less than $12,000,000 to 
$15,000,000, some rating it as high as $20,000,000. 
He is the railway king of America, and the great 
power of Wall street. Among the shrewd he is the 
shrewdest ; among the bears', the most bearish ; among 
the bulls, the most bullish. He always plays to win, 
and he is so accurate a judge of men, so clear-sighted, 
so fertile of resource, so skillful an organizer of com- 
binations, and the wielder of such an immense capital, 
that failure is next to impossible. A man of great 
nerve and determination, entirely self-confident and 
self-sufQcient, with half a century of training in the 
school of financial selfishness, able to draw his check 
at any moment for millions, he is a foe even Wall 
street stands in awe of 

Vanderbilt has an office in Fourth Street, and con- 
ducts his immense business as easily as if it embraced 
only a few hundreds. He goes to Wall street every 
day, but his work is usually done in four or five hours. 
He is a passionate lover of horses, has half a dozen of 
the fastest trotters in the country in his stables, and 
would give $25,000 to $50,000 any time for any of the 
famous animals he has long coveted. The way to 
the Commodore's heart lies through the stable, and 
two or three of his favorites have reached it by that 

road. I 

22 



338 The Great Metropolis 

Every pleasant afternoon he can be seen driving in 
the Park, and he enjoys it as a youth with his first 
horse might. He is a good liver ; but is too discreet, 
too careful of his health to become the victim of the 
larder or the wine cellar. He enjoys a woodcock or 
Spanish mackerel, a pate de foie gras or saddle of ven- 
ison, a rare old bottle of Burgundy or Veuve Clicquot ; 
but he has never suffered from the dyspepsia or the 
gout. He is hale, hearty, and, though nearly an octo- 
genarian, younger than many men with half his years, 
so ruddy, erect and vigorous that few would believe 
him beyond the prime of life. 

He has a strong, expressive face, and his clear com- 
plexion, aquiline nose, strong frame and clear-cut stat- 
ure of six feet, entitle him to the reputation of a hand- 
some old man. He certainly enjoys himself. His life 
is divided between railways, horses and whist, of which 
last he is a devotee, playing almost every evening 
with a zest that never tires. Talleyrand said to a 
young man who did not know whist, " Alas ! my friend, 
what an unhappy old age is before you ! " Yander- 
bilt has provided against that, and when his partner re- 
turns his lead, and isn't afraid of trumps, his evenings 
are blessed. 

Seventy-four, and worth millions, Cornelius Vander- 
bilt, at least, has a large family to leave them to, and 
when the thin gentleman who is supposed to ride on a 
pale horse, calls upon him, he will ask what time the 
steed can make, and go along satisfied if he can do a 
mile inside of Dexter's best. 



CHAPTER XXXVni. 
BROADWAY. 

Broadway is New-York intensified, — the reflex of 
the Republic, — hustling, feverish, crowded, ever chang- 
ing. 

Broadway is hardly surpassed by any street in the 
World. It is cosmoramic and cosmopolitan. In its 
vast throng, individuality is lost, and the race only is 
remembered. All nations, all conditions, all phases of 
life are represented there. Like nature, it never 
cloys ; for it is always varying, always new. 

A walk through Broadway is like a voyage round 
the Globe ; and to the student of humanity it is inter- 
esting every day and every hour of the seasons. For 
years I have floated up and down its regular tides, and 
yet it is fresh to-day as it was in early childhood. Its 
gaudiness and frippery no longer attract, but its human 
interest grows and expands. 

No thoroughfare in the country so completely repre- 
sents its wealth, its enterprise, its fluctuations, and its 
progress. Broadway is always being built, but it is 
never finished. The structures that were deemed 
stately and magnificent a few years ago are constantly 
disappearing, and new and more splendid ones are 
rising in their places. 

Wood has yielded to brick, brick to stone, and stone 



340 The Great Metropolis. 

to marble. Before the next decade has passed, Broad- 
way is likely to glitter in continuous marble from the 
Battery to Madison Square ; and, ere the century is 
ended, it promises to be the most splendid street, archi- 
tecturally, on either side of the Atlantic. 

The rent of one of its ordinary stores is a princely 
income, and its cost exhausts a liberal fortune. Pov- 
erty is rigorously excluded from its imposing confines, 
and pecuniary success alone is recognized by its state- 
ly piles. Trade must of necessity thrive there. If it 
be crippled never so little, rude Prosperity crowds it 
into humbler quarters. "Come not here," say its 
showy structures, "if you have not money; for only 
lengthy purses can buy you welcome!" 

Whatever is purchasable can be had in Broadway. 
Virtue and honesty may be bought there like tropical 
fruits and diamond bracelets. All the markets of the 
Earth contribute to its supplies, and its goods are fur- 
nished from every port whence vessels sail. 

You need never go out of Broadway for the obtain- 
ment of every luxury and the indulgence of every 
pleasure. Stay there contentedly, and Paris, and 
London, and Berlin, and Florence will come to you. 
The wares and products of Europe and of Asia are 
within your daily promenade. Open your purse, and 
all your desires shall be gratified. 

LucuUus, and Sardanapalus, and Apicius might have 
delighted every sense with the last refinements of vo- 
luptuousness between Canal and Twenty-sixth street, 
and found new joys as fast as the old were sated. 
Banquets as rich as theirs, music as sweetly seductive, 
women as fair and frail, would come at their pecunia- 
ry bidding, in this as in the centuries long past. 



J 



Broadway. 341 

Vice wears a fair mask at every corner, and Art 
smiles in a thousand bewitching forms. Hotels, and 
playhouses, and bazaars, and music-halls, and bagnios, 
and gambling hells are radiantly mingled together ; 
and any of them will give what you seek, and more 
sometimes. 

Be it India shawls or Italian singers ; Mechlin laces, 
or mementoes of the Orient ; Persian silks, or poems 
that every age makes newly immortal ; lore of the 
ancients," or love-adventures; flowers of the tropics, or 
fleeces from Thibet, — anything rare, or ripe, or dan- 
gerous, or dainty, — each and all are within your reach, 
if you can pay the price morally and materially. 

But to the philosopher, no less than the pleasure- 
seeker, Broadway has its charms ; for he can find there 
stimulant for thought and food for feeling. He can 
meet at every turn his brothers from other climes, his 
sisters in other spheres. Their blood has flown in such 
divergent streams that he knows his kindred not. 
Yet, if he tarried with them long, he would see how 
they are related. 

How the ranks and antagonisms of life jostle each 
other on that crowded pave ! Saints and sinners, men- 
dicants and millionaires, priests and poets, courtesans 
and chiffoniers, burglars and bootblacks, move side by 
side in the multiform throng. They touch at the el- 
bows, with all the World between them. They breathe 
the same breath, and yet they are entire strangers. 

The same bodies and the same souls, something lies 
between them they shall never cross, unless fickle'^For- 
tune makes them golden equals. But in this broad, 
free air there is hope for all. 

They may change positions in a few years. The 



342 The Great Metropolis 

lowly strive to climb, and the lofty are like to fall. 
Let the kaleidoscope of destiny turn, and the same 
elements assume new and shining forms ; and still they 
are only bits of gaudy glass. 

You and I, reader, can see all our friends, if we are 
so fortunate as to have them, and our acquaintances 
of other days in Broadway. 

The men we met up the Nile, and climbed Mont 
Blanc with, and dined opposite at the Trois Freres and 
gossiped about at the bull-hght in Madrid, will bow at 
the corner of Houston or Warren street. Or, if they 
do not, they will come by and by. 

The dark-eyed gipsy who won such rolls of coin at 
Hombourg; the olive-cheeked beauty we captivated 
with our slender Italian at Rome ; the fair and spiritu- 
elle American to whom we made love on the deck of 
the vessel that sailed so dreamily down the Danube 
under the star-studded sky, — they will pass us, if we 
wait and walk often in Broadway. 

With how many companions have I strolled and ridden 
through Broadway during the past twenty years ! As 
a child, I remember being borne along by the hand, 
when Canal street was up town, and Union Square the 
terminus of the promenade. Those companions, like 
the buildings of the street, have disappeared in the 
grave or in the spaces of the Globe, and were forgotten 
until some incident or association brought them to 
memory again. 

Every day one meets those he saw last on the other 
side of the ocean or existence, or under circumstances 
directly opposed to the present time or place. 

A AValk through Broadway revives recollection; 
makes life flow backward for the hour; lifts the cur- 



Broadway. 343 

tain from scenes of the past; recreates feelings often 
pleasant, oftener painful, — all ghosts of the dead years 
that shimmer through our darkened memory. 

Come with me, you who have traveled and seen the 
World at strange angles, and had loves, and hates, and 
ambitions, and expectations ; and Broadway will show 
you how hollow they all are ; how experience repeats 
itself, and the divinest passions pall and pale. 

In the midst of this bustle, and fret, and hurry, 
Poetry gleams out fitfully, and Philosophy looks stead- 
ily with calm, sad eyes. 

There dashes by in the handsome carriage the woman 
who vowed she worshiped you once, though she was 
another's; who called you her lord, her master, and 
her king; and all whose peace, she declared, lay in the 
little words, ''I love you!" Perhaps you believed it 
then. But she and you mutually forgot. Circumstance 
strangled sentiment, and Destiny passion. And now 
she knows not your face; and what then seemed to 
you tragedy proves a droll comedy after all. 

You are wiser in the present. You have concluded 
that what we call Love is merely sweet cordial. It 
intoxicates for the time, and we see not things as they 
are. But soberness returns, and the purple phantasy 
vanishes, and Love proves to be a dream, w^hich has 
its attractions, though we are aware it is only a dream. 

That face looks familiar as it goes by. Reflection 
tells you it belongs to your nearest friend, of a few 
years ago. You and he quarreled about a trifle — per- 
haps a pretty face, perhaps over a warm argument. 
You wonder you could have liked him ever. He is 
hard and selfish wdiom you believed the soul of gen- 
erosity and chivalry. But so it always proves wdien 
separation mars idealization.. 



344 The Great Metropolis. 

Who would suppose that large, ruddy creature, the 
mother of half a dozen children, was the sentimental 
school-girl whose blue eyes you kissed, and whose 
golden hair you caressed, in the New-England town, 
or in the sunny South, ten or fifteen years ago? You 
are not conscious of it. But it is so. The inexorable 
facts of life have hidden her identity, and changed her 
inwardly and outwardly. 

The well-to-do person who pushes past was your 
companion-in-arms during our great War. The last 
time you saw him, he was bleeding in the hospital-tent, 
amid the roar of the fierce battle. You left him dying 
as you thought, and hurried to the front line. Since 
then you have not met him, and now he is a successful 
merchant in Murray street. 

What a badge of prosperity wears he who steps into 
his cou])e and drives off with the air of a nabob. You 
remember you lent him, in Chicago or New-Orleans, 
the means to buy his breakfast at the convention some 
vears befor the civil struggle. Since that period he 
has made a million in Wall street, and is director in 
one of the largest of the Broadway banks. 

In the next block you encounter a haggard, poverty- 
stricken man, whom you knew in the South as a planter 
that reckoned his estate by hundreds of thousands. 
Fortune went ill with him, and he lives now by the 
charity of a few, and lives hard. Heaven knows, though 
he has given away what would make him rich again. 

Brawny and muscular is the man with the dark eyes 
and coal black hair across the way. He was a black- 
leg and prize-fighter ten years since. He is now a 
blackleg and a companion of bulls and bears, and a 
member of Congress, who is not wholly out of place in 




PAP.K BAXK, PROADIVAY. 



Broadway. 345 

Washington either; for far worse men than he have 
been there, — are there at this moment, the more's the 
pity. 

But who is not in Broadw^ay? All who are not 
dead are, or have been, or will be. Aad the dead may 
be, too, in another foi'm. Stay there, and the World 
will come round to you in its own season. 

Expect the Emperor of the French, and the Czar of 
Ptussia, and the Pope, and the Sultan; for Broadway 
draws the streams of the World into its strong currents 
more and more every year. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 
THE THIEVES. 

Crime has a strange fascination for the best of us; 
and a deep interest in its details belongs to human na- 
ture. After fairy tales and wonder-books little people 
are drawn to the horrors of vice as babes to the ma- 
ternal bosom. And children "of a larger growth rarely 
lose their taste for the terrible save through the puri- 
fication of discipline and culture. The "Pirate's Own 
Book" and the confessions of murderers the precocious 
boy soon loses his relish for ; but even in mature years 
he finds highly-seasoned food for his mind in the career 
of burglars and the adventures of assassins. 

This is not singular either; for every phase of hu- 
manity concerns us, though unconsciously, as a possible 
experience of our own. If we are broad and philo- 
sophic, we read of shuddering vices as something we 
escaped by favor of circumstance. If we are narrow 
and commonplace, we find satisfaction in the thought 
that others are so much worse than we, forgetful that 
organization and surroundings determine fate. 

But, however interesting crime may be, criminals 
are not, unless set in illusion and encircled with ro- 
mance. Stripped of the raiment with which fancy 
invests them, they are like the tinseled kings of the 
stage when the curtain has Mien upon their mimic 



The Thieves. 347 

sway. They are personally and mentally what they 
are morally — common characters without the smallest 
poetic pegs to hang idealization on. 

Jerry O'Brien may glimmer for a moment like a 
hero, as he stands young and sober, penitent and calm 
on the scaffold. Bob Lefferts may seem daring and 
desperate as he appears in a flash print leaping Avith a 
dark lantern from one roof to another while policemen 
follow the burglar with flashing pistols. But examin- 
ation proves them to be vulgar villains, whose manners 
are quite as repulsive as their morals. 

Robbers and thieves have long been made the crea- 
tions of romance by men of genius as well as by com- 
mon scribblers pandering to vitiated tastes. Schiller 
made Charles de Moor a model of romantic scoundrel- 
ism, and Walter Scott painted the cattle-thieves and 
coarse freebooters of the Highlands as magnificent fel- 
lows devoted to a sacred cause. So the poor brains 
of writers for the New-York weeklies strive to invest 
the thieves of the Metropolis with high redeeming vir- 
tues, and partially succeed with such readers as know 
nothing of the plundering class. They are petty and 
sorry rogues, however, when you see them as they are, 
and won't admit of sentimental or sympathetic treat- 
ment. 

The professional thieves of the Metropolis, independ- 
ent of those in the City Hall, number 6,000 or 7,000. 
They are rapidly increasing, and are said to be nearly 
double what they were fifteen years ago. Their call- 
ing is as distinct, their business as systematic, as that 
of their more honest neighbors. They form a part of 
our great centre of civilization, and perhaps regard 
themselves as essential to its continuance. No doubt 



^-^8 The Great Metropolis. 

they perform certain functions which result indirectly 
to the advantage of the community, though their im- 
mediate effect can hardly be considered beneficial. 

The thieves of New- York are of various kinds, though 
they may be divided into five classes, each of which is 
separate from the other, and demands the exercise of 
particular capacities or qualities. The classes are bur- 
glars, hotel-robbers, shop-lifters, pickpockets, and 
sneak-thieves. They never interfere or associate with 
each other, and the lines of demarkation are as firmly 
drawn between them as between lawyers, physicians, 
and merchants. 

Burglars are at the head of the profession ; are look- 
ed up to and admired as congressmen by ward politi- 
cians, or full-fledged authors by novices in composition. 
They have necessarily more brain and nerve than com- 
mon pillagers, and they believe that for eminent suc- 
cess they must be born to their vocation as poets and 
orators are. Pure American burglars are scarce, but, 
when found, are shrewder and more dangerous and 
reckless than those of foreign birth. 

Most of the tribe are English, with a considerable 
intermixture of Irish and Germans. Now and then 
you discover a Scotchman, Frenchman, or Spaniard 
among them, but very seldom; for those nationalities 
show little genius for the peculiar calling. They are 
rarely if ever men of education,— few of them can write 
indeed,— but they are constitutionally cunning and 
bold, with all their animal instincts strongly developed. 
They closely resemble prize-fighters in character and 
habit, and occasionally sink to the grade of fistic cham- 
pions by force of circumstances. They are usually 
indolent, and operate only at considerable intervals ; 



The Thieves. 349 

prudence as well as temperament requiring that their 
labors should be succeeded by long intermissions. After 
varied experience, however, they attain a love of ad- 
venture and danger that sometimes prompts them to 
misdeeds when necessities do not. One or two bur- 
glaries a month satisfy their avarice and ambition ; and, 
if they are well rewarded in an enterprise, they often 
lie idle for a whole season. 

Burglars proceed cautiously and systematically al- 
ways; doing their work by prescribed degrees and 
after a thorough maturing of their plans. They first 
select a house or store into which they intend to break ; 
watch it generally for several days, perhaps weeks, to 
determine the habits of its inmates, — when they come 
and go, how many there are, where they secrete their 
valuables, what precautions against thieves are adopted 
or omitted, and aught else needful to be learned. 

The robber always has a confederate, sometimes two 
or more ; the confederate keeping vigil to give due 
warnings of the approach of danger, or to draw atten- 
tion away from his chief while the crime is accomplished 
or escape secured. 

False keys are largely employed by the burglar, who 
manages to obtain an impression of the key-hole in wax 
when unobserved, and so supplies himself with the 
means of ingress. 

The key procured, and the habits of the inmates and 
the construction of the building having been ascertain- 
ed, — this branch of the art is technically called " plant- 
ing, — the burglar and his confederate, thoroughly 
armed, either to terrify others or defend themselves, 
and provided with gunpowder, dark-lantern, jimmy 



350 The Great Metropolis. 

and outsider, go to the place selected, and proceed to 
business. 

When everything is quiet — about 2 or 3 o'clock in 
the morning is the time generally selected, as persons 
sleep most soundly then — the confederate takes his 
stand outside, while the burglar applies the key ; uses 
his jimmy, if necessary, to pry off bolts; and enters, 
carefully closing the door after him. He knows Avhere 
he is going, and exactly Avhat he seeks. If a safe is 
to be entered, he accomplishes his purpose ; abstracts 
the contents, and departs noiselessly in his soft slippers 
provided for the occasion. If a silver closet is to be 
ransacked, he has a bag with him ; carries off his plun- 
der, rejoins his confederate, and they go cautiously to 
their abode or an appointed rendezvous. In the event 
of a surprise by policemen, the confederate gives an 
understood signal, commonly a peculiar whistle, and 
the insider escapes as best he can. If the occupants 
of a dwelling are awakened, the burglar, too closely 
followed, will often attempt to frighten his pursuer, 
and sometimes take life to avoid arrest. Generally, 
however, it is his interest to hurt no one, and he will 
abstain from the use of weapons while it is possible to 
get away. Many robbers are cowardly when con- 
fronted ; but others are courageous and even des- 
perate, and will not long hesitate between shooting 
and escaping. 

The first-class burglar universally prefers stores or 
warehouses to dwellings, for the former offer greater 
inducement, and can be entered with less peril. Pri- 
vate houses are most likely to be entered in the Sum- 
mer, when families are absent from the City, and rob- 
beries in that quarter are mainly confined to the out- 
of-town season. 



The Thieves. 351 

Hotel robbers, as their name implies, frequent hotels, 
generally boarding at them, and passing for strangers. 
They dress well ; have quiet manners ; assume to have 
business with various firms, the location of whose 
stores they inquire at the office ; go out and come in 
at stated hours ; read and write spurious letters, and 
play the country merchant like the trained artists that 
they are. The members of this class are generally 
educated, partially at least, and bear nothing sus- 
picious about them. 

They are ever on the alert, and soon learn what 
boarders are worth stealing from. When the occu- 
pants of certain rooms are out, they slip in with false 
keys, and possess themselves of such valuables and 
garments as they can lay hands on. They remove 
the screws of bolts, and leave the bolts in their 
places by means of putty or wax, so that they can 
obtain entrance after the guest or guests have retired 
for the night. Nearly every public house in town has 
some of these thieves among its boarders ; and yet the 
special detectives employed by landlords do not know 
the scoundrels. The rogues operate very adroitly, 
and generally so securely that years elapse before they 
are found out. They do not stay long in one house, 
or in one town, but make tours of the large cities, re- 
maining long enough away from New York to recruit 
any unhealthiness of reputation. Once detected, their 
usefulness to themselves is seriously impaired, as they 
are marked characters ever afterward, and expelled 
the moment they enter a public house, unless they are 
very carefully disguised. Even if suspected they fare 
badly ; for to be suspected is nearly as bad as to be 
proved guilty. 



352 The Great Metropolis. 

The hotel-thieves are the "gentlemanly" thieves ^ar 
excellence^ and are more likely to impose upon the 
community than any others. They are apt to begin 
by genteel swindling, and end as forgers. I have 
known them to be men of quite respectable family 
and considerable culture, who, from living beyond 
their means and borrowing money recklessly, so lost 
all credit and self-respect that they were finally com- 
pelled to steal to sustain their extravagance. 

Shop-lifters are composed of both sexes, the women 
being quite as numerous as the men. They confine 
their depredations entirely to stores, and adopt many 
ingenious devices to plunder. They are compelled to 
resort to new shifts, as the old ones are discovered 
after a brief while. They have confederates generally, 
that the attention of merchants may be engaged while 
the purloining takes place. They steal from the front 
of stores — the Bowery is a favorite field of operations 
— while their associates are examining goods inside. 
They acquire special skill, and can pick up a ring or a 
bracelet, a pair of shoes, a piece of silk or lace, and 
conceal it before the very eyes of a clerk, in a manner 
that would do credit to a professional necromancer. 

Sometimes they have capacious bags into which 
they sweep articles when the salesman's back is turned ; 
then purchase a trifle and depart. Both sexes wear 
sleeves that favor concealment, and have a knack of 
hiding things about their persons that only long prac- 
tice could have perfected. They frequently purchase 
a box of goods, conceal it somewhere and carry it ofF, 
leaving another much like it, prepared beforehand, in 
its place ; say they will return and pay for it, and get 
off undiscovered. Children are trained to the art, and 



i^. ?30g©SgA7 










'-S^^^rJhl 



t- 






iJH»!'.'Nlllii!:iiii:i';: : JiiiiiilJil 



i 



The Thieves. 353 

prosper in it, because, from their tender age, they are 
not suspected. Little boys and girls of nine and ten, 
and even six and seven, are taught to steal by their 
parents, and do it so well as to prove that certain 
kinds of genius are hereditary. 

Pickpockets seldom enter upon their profession until 
they have been educated, by learned professors, to the 
needful sleight of hand and delicacy of manipulation. 
There are places in the Fourth, Sixth and Eighteenth 
wards where schools like those of Fagin, and disciples 
like the Artful Dodger may be found. Pickpockets 
are well, but modestly, attired, and ply their trade at 
the places of amusement, in Broadway, in the stages 
and street-cars, at fires and the ferries, where there is 
a crowd, with its attendant jostle and confusion. 
Their dexterity is marvelous. If the opportunity be 
favorable, they can get your watch and pocket-book 
every day in the week ; and yet each time you will 
wonder how they did it. 

Recently some of them have become ticket-specu- 
latore in front of the theaters, where they have ad- 
mirable facilities for robbery, and avail themselves 
thereof to the utmost. 

A favorite plan of theirs is to excite, or assume to 
excite, a disturbance of some kind, and under the ap- 
parent endeavor to extricate themselves from the 
crowd, to reap a digital harvest. Not infrequently 
they charge an honest man with taking their pocket- 
book, and, during the temporary excitement, steal his, 
and make oif with it. 

New- York is the best place in the World for pocket- 
picking, in consequence of the carelessness of the 

people, their haste, and habit of carrying considerable 
23 



354 The Great Metropolis. 

sums of money npon their persons. Traveled gentry 
of light-lingered proclivities testify they can do bettei 
in the Metropolis than anywhere else. 

Sneak-thieves have no regular method. They get 
their name from sneaking into entry ways and shops 
and hotel rooms, carrying off hats, boots, coats and 
small articles generally. Sometimes they make a 
bolder flight ; sneak into bank-vaults, and steal bonds 
and securities ; but this is more properly the business 
of ingenious robbers who make their calling a study 
and an art. 

The sneaks are a most contemptible class, and are 
despised by all others whose profession it is to steak 
They have a hang-dog look, and cannot meet the gaze 
of a passerby. Without courage, skill or tact, they are 
stragglers from the army of common scoundrels ; rob- 
bing children, old women, and drunken men. They 
are the fellows who sell brass watches to country 
people ; play the ball-game and the little joker ; plun- 
der poor emigrants at the Battery ; pass the night 
with wretched courtesans, and steal their clothes in. the 
morning. 

They run so few risks; are so timid and unambi- 
tious that they are not very often arrested, and when 
they are, are merely sent to Blackwell's island for a 
few months, and released to continue their small vil- 
lainies. 

^' Cheating luck never thrives " is a homely proverb, 
but true. Nor does stealing, either. Few of any of 
the hundreds of thieves that infest the City ever accu- 
mulate anything. They are all prodigal, wasteful, dis- 
sipated — gamblers, debauchees, lechers; work harder 
and suffer more to be dishonest than they need to be 
honest and prosper. 



\v 



The Thieves. 355 

But, like all the rest of us, their destiny is deter- 
mined for them by circumstances, and they move in 
the direction their organization propels them. If they 
are thieves, they are in good company ; for tens of 
thousands of more fortunate New-Yorkers steal with, 
but not like them. 

Their conscience need not trouble them sorely — nor 
does it, I suspect, for those we call the worst are prone 
to justify their conduct to themselves — because they 
can walk down the fashionable avenues and the busi- 
ness streets, point to the brown-stone and marble pal- 
aces and say, "Here are our brothers in misdoing; 
but they rob more freely and securely, and we are 
punished for all ! " 



CHAPTER XL. 
SUNDAY IN THE METROPOLIS. 

The difference between Sunday and what is known 
as week days is more distinctively marked in the 
Metropolis than in any American city outside of New 
England. Paris and Palmyra are hardly more unlike 
than New-York on Sunday and New-York on other 
days, 

Tlie mighty machine with all its wheels, and cranks, 
and levers, and cylinders, stops on Saturday night 
like a clock that has run down, and does not move 
again until Monday morning. Broadway and Wall 
street, the Bowery and Nassau street, Fifth avenue and 
Twenty-third street, lose their characteristic features 
on Sunday, and hundreds of thousands of persons and 
things suddenly and mysteriously disappear during a 
space of twenty four hours. New- York, so noisy, so 
feverish, so gay, so bewildering on six days of the week, 
waxes quiet and sober on the seventh. The wild 
week's spree of Manhattan ends with the midnight of 
Saturday, and is followed by repose, if not reflection. 

Strangers who dote on the great City for its excite- 
ments ajid sensations abhor its Sabbaths, and depart 
if po=!sible before its desolation comes. The hotels, 
crowded to suffocation, begin to empty on Friday, 
and by Saturday night look as deserted as if the 



Sunday in New- York. 357 

plague had stricken them. Gotham is the embodi- 
ment of dullness to all but native Metropolitans on 
Sunday. No theaters, no opera, no races, no libraries, 
no ever-changing Broadway, no teeming piers, no tur- 
bulent Wall street — what can the mere sojourner find 
for his profit or amusement ? He is caught by a run- 
out tide, and he may hoist signals of distress, never so 
many ; but he is little likely to be relieved until Mon- 
day's returning tide takes him off again. 

Time was, before the Excise Law, when strangers 
consoled themselves for lack of externals by inward 
administerings. They fled to bar-rooms for cocktail 
comfort and brandy smash satisfaction. They got 
drunk in self-defense. Sunday was specially distin- 
guished for its inebriates. Bar-keepers divided 
their labors with policemen. The station-houses were 
full, and head-aches, nausea and repentances were the 
inseparable accompanient of Monday morning. All 
that is changed now. Drinking saloons are closed to 
the multitude. They who are stranded in the Me- 
tropolis on Sunday must keep sober as their surround- 
ings ; cultivate philanthropy ; be patient until the little 
world along the Hudson revolves again. 

Sunday in New- York may not be a day of worship, 
but it is a day of rest. Everything rests but the 
street-cars, and druggists, and journalists. Their toil 
is Sisyphian ; the wheel to which they are bound Ixi- 
onic. Broadway is locked and barred and bolted, all 
the way from Bowling Green to its upper terminus. 
Exchange place is silent as the tomb of the Ptolemies. 
Broadway is hushed as Herculaneum and Pompeii. 
The Stock Exchange and the Gold Room, those tem- 
porary asylums for financial maniacs, glare like the 



358 The Great Metropolis. 

dead in marble stillness. The hundreds of seething 
operators and speculators have dispersed as if nature 
had read the riot act to them. The bears have lain 
down somewhere with the lambs of peace ; and the 
bulls have wrapped their horns with the folds of do- 
mestic felicity. 

The City Hall has forgot its cunning ; and council- 
men and aldermen steal not until the morrow. The 
Fourth and Sixth wards attempt a feeble show of de- 
cency ; wash half their face, and see some of the filth 
they live in. Dover, and Oak, and Cherry streets 
draw their sooty children from the reeking gutter, and 
greet the soft sunshine with new rags of fetid finery. 

The fires of the thousands of subterranean boilers go 
out down town, and the powerful engines sleep on their 
oily pillows. Only in the neighborhood of Printing- 
House square do keen-eyed men telegraph thought to 
the World with the click, click of their falling type, 
and bend over paper-heaped desks, and feed fires, and 
make steam that starts the thunder of giant presses that 
rumbles throughout the Globe. 

And yet New-York is neither devout nor prayerful. 
It believes more in Sunday than the Sabbath. It 
ceases from labor rather than from sin. It obeys na- 
ture, not theology. It is not contrite, but its hands 
are tired. The churches do not draw to their sanctu- 
aries one in twenty of the rest-takers Many have no 
faith in them. And those who have cannot afford the 
luxury of divine service any more than that of an 
opera box. One costs nearly as much as the other, 
and the latter is to many more attractive. The world- 
ling reasons thus : 

" Why should any man feel obliged to weary him- 



Sunday in New-York. 359 

self with tedious sermons monotonously delivered when 
he can remain at home and rest comfortably? It is no 
more a duty to go to church than to Europe ; and he 
who goes merely from sense of duty would better re- 
main away. To be inspired with new and good reso- 
lutions, to be truer, juster, purer, more charitable — 
that is what wo should seek. Wherever we become 
so is the best place for us, whether at the altar or the 
theater, whether in the kneeling congregation or in 
the solitude of our own chamber." 

Our three or four hundred churches wo ild not be- 
gin to hold the million that sheathes its claws of toil 
on Sunday. They who are benefited by churches find 
them, I suppose, in spite of repellent sextons and 
frigid worshipers whose eyes say: "Come not here! 
You may be holy, but you are not well-dressed." But 
the many seek religion in rest, in communion with 
their families, in pleasant books, in the fresh air of the 
sea, in the visits of their friends, in the sweet con- 
sciousness of belonging for one day to themselves. 
Those things sing and preach to them better and 
more effectively than paid choirs and doctrinal clergy- 
men. If to labor is to pray, rest is the answer to the 
prayer ; and we all need leisure and freedom even to 
be good. 

But for Sunday few of our mechanics or merchants 
would become well acquainted with their families. 
When they step from the tread-mill in the evening 
they are too worn and tired for full appreciation of 
their homes. Tasks that cannot wait, engagements 
that must be met drag them aw^ay from hasty breakfasts 
and unfinished sentences to the workshop over the 
river or down-tow^n. They know nothing can be done 



360 The Great Metropolis. 

on Sunday. So thej free their minds as well as their 
hands from the week-day slavery, and give their heart 
and soul fourteen or fifteen hours out of the hundred 
and sixty-eight. 

Monroe the banker, who has talked, thought and 
dreamed of nothing but stocks, finds on Sunday he has 
some interest in his wife's happiness ; that affection pays 
dividends larger than New- York Central, or Chicago 
and Rock Island. He discovers that a true woman 
wants something more than money, and that the most 
liberal purchases at Stewart's and Tiffany's will not 
quite fill her heart. 

Eigelow, the great dry goods jobber, ceases to fig- 
ure for the Fall trade, and, taking his. blue-eyed baby 
in his arms, becomes indifferent to the decline in wool- 
ens or the price of sheetings for all time to come. 

The ambitious young book-keeper who has worked 
half the night for a month past, hoping to have an in- 
terest in the house some day, remembers on Sunday 
evening he has not for months seen that gentle girl 
who took such angelic care of her sick father until he 
died. ''By Jove, she'd make a capital wife for some 
man," he thinks. "Why not for me? I'm not vain; 
but 1 can't help believing she likes me. When I took 
her hand the first time in the little parlor, it certainly 
trembled, and so did her voice. Strange ; I had nearly 
forgotten that. I'll go, and see her at once. My pros- 
pects are good ; I'll propose. Benedict was right. The 
World must be peopled." 

The salesman on West Broadway who is compelled 
to keep his little family out of town for economy, and 
live in the City himself on account of the hours he is 
occupied, rejoins the loved ones Saturday evening, and 



Sunday in New- York. 361 

Sunday reopens the gates of his domestic Eden shut 
all the week to its master and its lord. When his dear 
young wife runs to meet him at the gate with the baby 
in her arms, does he not bless Sunday, and Heaven 
that gave him such a treasure, with the "prettiest and 
smartest child in the world," in one and the same 
breath ? 

During the warm months excursions are abundant 
here on Sunday; and, were it not for the frequent 
rowdyism that attends them, they would be unalloyed 
pleasure to the poor. Even as they are, they are most 
desirable ; for they give new health and life to the la- 
borer and mechanic, whose hard labors shut them up 
in New- York as if it were a besieored citv. 

Boats leave for almost every point on Sunday, to 
the East and North rivers, up the sound, down the 
bay. Staten island, Coney island, delightful spots on 
Long Island, groves, green hills, cool valleys, the sea- 
side — are all within easy reach. The charge is small. 
Far a dollar or two one can have a quiet day beyond 
brick walls and burning heat. 

It is pleasant to see the crowd of bronzed and mus- 
cular men with their wives and children thronging to 
the piers on Sunday, and steaming oif in quest of 
recreation and repose. They are not handsome nor 
elegant, nor entirely polite ; but they are honest and 
industrious and human ; and their happiness reflects 
itself upon every soul that is in sympathy with its fel- 
lows. If their life is hard, and their circumstances 
narrow, they can enjoy themselves more easily than 
those whose lot is above theirs. They are far happier 
than the more fortunate would suppose. Trifles give 
them satisfaction, and the atoms in their little sun- 
beams dance to pleasant tunes. 



362 The Great Metropolis. 

The City never appears so well or so contented as 
on Sunday, which is the whitest day in the seven. It 
is the waking from the restoring sleep after the long 
delirium, the return to consciousness after the mutter^ 
ing fever. The look of anxiety and restlessness pecu- 
liar to American faces in great cities is gone. Some- 
thing like the old child-like color comes back to them 
in gratitude for the Sabbath. New- York grows 
3^oung again on that day ; for its cares and concerns 
are set aside. The fierce storm of Broadway has lulled. 
You can see its pavement clear and clean from Morris 
street to Grace church. Along its sidewalks are no 
hurrying feet. The lumbering stages have departed — 
would they were all at the bottom of the East river ! 
— there is no blockading, even at Fulton or Courtlandt 
street. No body of desperate pedestrians are charging 
upon the Astor House or St. Paul's, or endeavoring to 
surround the City Hall Park, and cut it off from the 
main army marching to Whitehall. Park Row and 
Nassau street, after 11 o'clock, are innocent of yelling 
newsboys, who would have driven Frederic Fairlie, 
Esq., to immediate dissolution, and before whom As- 
trea over the way seems nervous through her marble 
robes. 

The parks (all this when the weather is pleasant of 
course,) are filled with men, women and children. 
They sit on the benches babbling of their small con- 
cerns, quite as important to them as our greater ones, 
or stroll or play in the walks, giving out the unmistak- 
able sounds that never come from heavy hearts. I 
wish there were more Sundays in the week. We 
should be better for them. New-York seems like Paris 
on Sunday in its contentedness ; but we are still far 



Sunday in New- York. 363 

behind that ciiy in our capacity for quiet pleasure 
and innocent recreation. In Paris Sunday is enjoyed 
rationally by the people at large, and if you have spent 
the Sabbath there, you may remember that you 
thought the city seemed less wicked then than on any 
other day of the week ; for it suggested outward and 
inward peace. 

We have not yet dared lo open the theaters and 
amusement-places for those who wish to go. We have 
musical entertainments like those of any other even- 
ing, and call them Sunday concerts. 

There must be something very wicked in'music not 
christened "sacred,"or in any recreation entirely inno- 
cent and even desirable on week-days, if it be indulged 
in on Sunday. But unilluminated heathen cannot see 
the difference the day makes. Heretics and sinners are 
inclined to believe that what is lawful and rational on 
Monday must be lawful and rational on Wednesday, or 
Saturday, or Sunday. But their opinions are not en- 
titled to serious consideration, certainly not to much 
respect. When they are converted, they may be lis- 
tened to ; albeit, while they stumble in the darkness, 
and declare they are not afraid of pits, the orthodox 
lantern must not be hung out for their accommoda- 
tion. 

Our churches and religious societies do much good. 
They might do more if they were broader, and did 
not insist on every one seeing with their eyes and 
speaking with their tongue. But the secular and 
spiritual-minded are agreed upon the beneficence of 
Sunday. It is a beautiful and peaceful, a wholesome 
and a healing day, whether the church-bells or the 
symphonies of Beethoven, or the verse of Shakspeare, 



364 The Great Metropolis. 

or tlie laugh of gladness — they are all religious — wel- 
come them in. 

Sunday "knits up the raveled sleeve of care," and 
lays the aching head upon pillows of down. It 
touches the fevered brow with the cool hand of sym- 
pathy, and baptizes with delicious moisture the lips 
that have grown dry and hot through the week's work. 
Sunday is a blessed and a blessing thing ; and before 
its fair Aurora the shadows of six days of weariness 
fade into light. 



CHAPTER XLI. 
THURLOW WEED. 

With the single exception of William Cullen Bryant, 
Thurlow Weed is the oldest editor in New-York, hav- 
ing been born in Cairo, in Greene County, of this 
State, November 15, 1797. Widely known and highly 
influential as he is and has been as a journalist, his con- 
nection with a metropolitan newspaper is very recent. 

Weed has had quite a varied career, having been a 
cabin boy, a wood-chopper, a printer, a soldier, a poli- 
tician and a journalist, faithfully serving and long work- 
ing, which last should redeem any sins, physical or 
spiritual, he may have committed. After "running" 
on the Hudson during his tenth and part of his eleventh 
year, he entered a printing office in the village of Cat- 
skill in the peculiar capacity of "devil." In his thir- 
teenth year he went to Cincinnatus, Cortlandt county, 
then on the frontier, and for some time led a primitive 
backwoods life. At the age of fourteen he returned 
to the art typographical, working at the case in sev* 
eral newspaper offices. 

He volunteered in the War of 1812, serving as priv- 
ate; subsequently established a paper for himself, and 
was the editor and assistant editor of some twelve 
country journals. He was violently opposed to Ma- 
sonry, about which there was so much excitement in 



366 The Great Metropolis. 

this State in 1826 and '27, and was twice elected to 
the lower house of the State Legislature. While there 
he so distinguished himself as a party manager, though 
he seldom spoke, that he was regarded as a marvel, 
ously proper man to oppose the body of Democrats 
known as the Albany Regency. He contributed very 
largely to the election of De Witt Clinton, and in 1830 
removed to the capital, where he became the responsi- 
ble editor of the Evening Journal^ which immediately 
rose to a power in the State. 

Since that time, a period of nearly fifty years, Weed 
has been constantly in j)olitics, and a prominent figure 
in public life. He has never, save his brief service in 
the Legislature, held public office, though he might 
have had any position, from Vice-President and mem- 
ber of the Cabinet to that of Governor or State Sena- 
tor. And yet he has been more a maker of politicians 
than any man in the country, and justly deserves the 
name of the political Warwick. In politics he literally 
lives, and moves, and has his being. Little has ever 
been done by his party — he has always been a Whig 
and Republican — without his counsel and co-operation. 
He attends every session of the State Legislature and 
National Congress, and is styled the greatest wire-pul- 
ler and lobbyist in the Union. He seems to have more 
offices in his gift than the President of the United 
States, and the Custom House of this City appears for 
many years to have been more under his control than 
if he had been the Collector of the port. To obtain 
the favor of Weed is to secure office, and his smile and 
frown have been for five and thirty years the delight 
and terror of all place-seekers along the Hudson. 

It used to be said that no man could be sent to the 



Thurlow Weed. 367 

Lejrislature whom Weed could not win over to his side 
if he deemed it worth the while. Assemblymen and 
State Senators bitterly and ferociously opposed to 
Weed, went to Albany — elected by his most violent 
enemies — and before they had been there three months 
they would undergo a revolution, coming to the con- 
clusion that the great political manager was one of the 
most mis-represented men in the Republic, He under- 
stands human nature thoroughly; has admirable tact 
and profound insight into character. He flatters the 
vain ; supports the weak ; softens the bold ; encourages 
the timid; sympathizes with the strong, and leads men 
by seeming to follow them ; molds and controls them 
through their interest and self-love. Hundreds of in- 
stances might be given of his adroit dealing with stub- 
born spirits, whom, in most cases, he has brought over 
to his will. Let one suffice. 

A very contumacious fellow was sent to the Assem- 
bly who hated Weed, and who had often declared he 
would make an expedition to the Bottomless Pit before 
he would vote for anything Weed advocated, and that 
he took no one's opinion but his own. It happened 
that T. W. wanted the man's vote, so he introduced 
himself one morning, saying: "I have often heard of 
you. I know you don't like me, and I respect your 
candor. I always esteem an open enemy. You are 
one of the few men who are self-reliant, have wills of ■ 
their own, and won't be influenced by others. I like 
that, too; I recognize in you a kindred spirit. We 
won't and can't agree, but that is no reason we should 
quarrel. Drop in and see me. I enjoy original men. 
You see I know you. If you won't be influenced by 
me, perhaps I can learn something from you." 



368 The Great Metiiopolis. 

In less than a week the resolute Assemblyman was 
carefully under the dominion of Weed, and believed 
the eminent manager had actually taken his counsel. 

The great Whig triumvirate of Seward, Weed and 
Greeley, had things pretty much their own way in this 
State until the last-mentioned member of the company, 
believing he had been very unfairly treated by his 
partners, dissolved the firm, and has since been their 
most persistent and uncompromising foe. 

Greeley seems to hate Weed as if he were a brother- 
in-law, and loses his temper whenever he refers to him, 
bursting out into such phrases as "the old villain lies, 
and knows he lies," with a spontaneous virulence that 
does more honor to his love of vigorous Saxon than 
his regard for courtesy. 

Since T. W. became the editor of the Commercial 
Advertiser^ he and H. G., before Weed went abroad, had 
controversies almost weekly ; and whatever may be the 
respective merits of the argument, the advantage of 
manners is in favor of Weed. He seems to be calm 
and gentle compared to the Tribune chief, who raves 
like a very drab when contending against the veteran 
of the Adver'tiser. The initials T. W. and H. G. appear 
so supremely inharmonious that it is fair to suppose 
their owners must have been born under adverse plan- 
ets. Those who pretend to know, say Weed enjoys 
"stirring up" his adversary very much as a showman 
does the lions, for the sake of hearing them roar. 

More than a year ago Weed purchased an interest 
in the Commercial Advertiser j finding that he could 
not be satisfied outside of a newspaper office. I re- 
member, twelve or fourteen years ago he took leave 
of the public in the Albany Evening Journal^ closing 



Thurlow Weed. 3^9 

with the remark that he was mindful of Gil Bias' ad- 
vice to the Archbishop of Granada. But he has not 
failed in power as the vain prelate did, and he has no 
need yet of a critical valet to inform him of his decay. 
The Advertiser has much improved since Weed took 
charge of it, and is far better than the many who never 
see it suppose. He is one of the few leader-writers 
who understand that leaders compared to other parts 
of a journal are of small consequence, as they are not 
generally read. 

Weed, now in his 71st year, shows signs of age and 
failing health, but is ambitious and resolute as ever. 
He devotes only two or three hours a day to his paper, 
having purchased an interest in it more for the purpose 
of having a vehicle of expression than with any view 
of adding to his fortune. His true throne was at Room 
No. 11, in the Astor House (he has just gone to the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel) where he held a perpetual levee, 
and where, on an average, fully one hundred men 
called daily, most of them on political errands. The 
ins were to be found there no less than the outs with 
every grade of publie officer, from United-States Sena- 
tor to deputy keeper of the Custom House coal-cellar, 
seeking interviews between the hours of 12 and 3 
o'clock. 

Thurlow Weed does not look at all like the man one 
vrould fancy him. Instead of a person of presence and 
high-bred air, he is a tall, thin, stooping man, carelessly 
dressed, with shambling gait, hurrying about as if he 
had a note to pay in fifteen minutes, and wanted to 
borrow the money of the first stranger he encountered. 
He gives one no impression of magnetism; and yet he 
must be a singularly magnetic man to wield so jjreat 

24 ^ 



370 The Great Metropolis. 

an influence and exercise such unlimited control over 
his fellows. He seems to want nothing for himself, but 
to spend his life obtaining place for others. His man- 
ners are very pleasant. He is extremely kind-hearted 
and charitable in every way, never rude or inconsid- 
erate, making friends of all who are near him, and do- 
ing hundreds of good deeds of which no one hears, and 
he never speaks. His ambition is power; but he seeniS 
to use his power mainly for others. His intimates are 
greatly attached to him, and say he is a much abused 
and thoroughly upright man, — political and crafty in 
politics, but honorable and chivalrous wherever his 
word is given, or his faith is plighted. 

He married early, and had three daughters; has 
long been a widower, and lives with his youngest, a 
maiden lady of most estimable charactpr, who has pre- 
served all the records of his life. Of these her kind 
father promises to make an interesting volume when 
his gray-haired youth is over, and he retires from act- 
ive and engrossing duties. He will never fulfil his 
promise. He is too busy for such a task. He will 
never have leisure to die, though Death will not be 
talked over or put off even by Thurlow Weed, the great 
tongue-wagger to some purpose. He is rich, his for- 
tune having been set down at $2,000,000 to $3,000,000. 
He may not be worth more than $1,000,000 ; for he 
is said to have lost largely of late years. But, what- 
ever the amount of his fortune, it is certain that he has 
been very careless in its collection. If his mind had 
baen concerned about money-getting he might have 
been as wealthy as Vanclerbilt; for he has had oppor- 
tunities to make millions, and, so far as is known, has 
surrendered them all to gratify his love of power. 



Thuelow Weed. 371 

He talks of retiring from ine Advertiser^ of giving 
up work, of living in the country; but he won't, or 
can't, I suspect. He has lately returned from Europe, 
and his health is still infirm. He has lived all his life 
amid the turmoil and strife of caucuses and political 
chambers. Near the bustle of Wall street and in the 
roar of Broadway it is fit he should close the busy days, 
which, with all their ambitions and contests, have left 
the gray-haired Warwick alive to every form of suffer- 
ing, and tender as the finest of women to the heart 
that needs help or healing whenever its need is made 
known. 



CHAPTER XLn. 
BLEECKER STREET 

No street in the Metropolis has changed more than. 
Bleecker, especially west of Broadway. Twenty-five 
years ago it was the abode of wealth and fashion ; 
and the then grand mansions stand conspicuously in 
the thoroughfare, with a semblance of departed great, 
ness, and an acknowledgment of surrendered splendor. 
The high stoops before which private carriages stopped, 
and emptied loads of feminine fragrance ; the broad 
halls and airy drawing-rooms that were trodden by 
dainty feet, and filled with soft voices and voluptuous 
music, are profaned to-day by more common uses. 
The old family mansions are restaurants or private 
boarding-houses, barrooms or groceries, peculiar phy- 
sicians' offices or midwives' headquarters. 

The day when Broadway above Bleecker was the 
quarter of the mode, has long passed, and the neigh- 
borhood of the latter street has become a synonym for 
singularity, if not mystery. The reputation of Bleeck- 
er street is not positively bad, as that of Greene and 
Mercer and Houston street is bad ; but it is question- 
able and just a little suspicious. It is like that of a 
woman who is much gossiped about. No one knows 



Bleecker Street. 3*73 

anything concerning it ; no one says anything direct ; 
no one makes accusation. But everybody has an 
opinion in private, and the presumption is against it. 

The denizens of Bleecker street are in the shadow. 
If the broad sunlight streamed in upon them, some- 
thing morally unpleasant might be discovered. It 
more resembles some of the streets in Paris than any 
other in New- York. It is the haunt of ultra Bohe- 
mians of both sexes. In the French Capital it would 
be termed the Rue des Maitresses, and the naniO' would 
not be inapt. Much of the atmosphere of the Latin 
Quarter breathes through the thoroughfare, and its 
poverty is frescoed with the colors of art. 

No street is more thoroughly cosmopolitan, more 
philosophic, more romantic. It is the Great City in 
miniature. Its photograph would be a copy of the 
features of the Metropolis, many of which we are 
prone to keep hidden from the public view. A walk 
through it any day, from Eighth avenue to the Bowery, 
will convey to an observer and man of the world, 
much of its hidden meaning. He will see strange 
characters and strange places that he does not notice 
elsewhere. A certain free and easy air will strike him 
as pervading the houses and shops and people. A 
peculiar air fills and surrounds them. They are deco- 
rous enough, but insouciant and independent. What 
they conceal they conceal from an art sense, not from 
ethical motives. They tell you nothing. You may 
conjecture what you may, and draw inferences to the 
end of time, and Bleecker street will smile coldly; 
shrug its shoulders, and say: "Perhaps;" "As you 
will ; " "I confess nothing ; I deny nothing ; " " Hold 
your own opinion, but keep it to yourself ! " 



374 The Great Metropolis. 

You will meet there the neatly, but not studiously-^ 
dressed woman, with dark eyes and mouth so freshly 
and moistly red that it will suggest carmine more than 
health. She is pretty, but has a self-consciousness and 
assurance which barely escape boldness, and intimate 
hardness somewhere. She meets your gaze steadily, 
as if she relished and were accustomed to admiration. 
Her glance expresses, " I know I am comely, if that 
is what you mean. If you are fond of me, say so ; 
such declarations I have heard often. Don't be afraid. 
We women are not the coy creatures you think us. 
We adore boldness, for boldness wins." 

Don't you recognize her ? She is the popular actress 
whom many of the critics praise far beyond her de- 
serts, because their personal liking for her has biased 
them. No man can coldly judge a woman at night, 
when he expects the next morning to be at her feet. 

She is a combination of Becky Sharp and Blanche 
Amory. She has had a score of lovers ; has several 
at this moment. Yet she makes each believe himself 
the only one. She dupes them charmingly ; for she 
is an artist and a sentimentalist. She is naturally 
affectionate and tender, and has power to delude her- 
self as well as her nearest friends. 

She remains on the stage because the stage lends 
her a bewitching something that does not belong to her. 
She knows men are selfish and sensual ; that desire 
and vanity bind and hold them more than aught else. 
She is generous, but not improvident. She is aware 
the day will come when her charms will fade, and her 
seductive arts will lose their potency. She is provid- 
ing for that day, and the Winter will not come with 
an ungathered harvest. 



Bleecker Street. 376 

When lier lovei-s desert her, and the World frowns, 
she will quit the City ; remove to a distant town ; 
change her name ; become a widow ; turn devout like 
Peg Woffington ; do acts of charity ; die esteemed 
and beloved, perhaps a wife and mother, perhaps a 
spinster, full of saintly virtues. 

The young fellow who calls a carriage and steps 
into it, redolent of perfume, fresh from the bath and 
the barber's, you have seen often in Broad street He 
is a stock-broker, shrewd, energetic, rather unscrupu- 
lous. Men cannot deceive him, but w^omen can, with- 
out trouble. He has just come from his mistress' 
chamber, in that hotel kept on the European plan. 
He believes she is his, sense and soul ; and he lavishes 
money upon her, which she gives to others of her fa- 
vored friends. 

Not sixty minutes since he quitted her ; and yet the 
man she really loves, mean, and 'despicable, and vulgar 
as he is, is with her, and kissing away her protector's 
kisses. Vanity blinds the victim. He is infatuated, 
too, and would hardly trust his own senses if they 
contradicted his conviction. Hack-drivers and Houston 
street panders point him out, and call him a '^flat" 
as he goes by ; but he swears she is so loyal nothing 
can alienate her from him. If conscious what common 
creatures he supplied with the means of living, he 
would be wounded to the core. He will make the 
discovery some time, and then be clamorous concern- 
ing woman's frailty. Because a wanton is not faithful 
to a fool, he will vow the whole sex is false. 

How many men are either too blindly confiding or 
morbidly skeptical ! They rarely learn the exact truth, 
that between extremes Nature and Truth walk hand- 
in-hand. 



376 The Great Metropolis. 

The ballet girl trips happily along. She is in the 
receipt of a regular salary from Niblo's, and she has 
just awakened to the absorbing passion of her life. 
She is yet unstained, though she has for four years 
been employed at the theaters. She has been assailed 
times without number ; but she has never loved till 
now, and she was strong, therefore, against temptation. 
Her heart now pleads against her, and she cannot resist 
its pleadings long. 

Four weeks ago — how well she remembers the even- 
ing — she observed a handsome gentleman at the stage 
door ; and since then his face has been looking into 
hers in dreams by night and dreams by day. The 
second evening he was introduced to her ; and ever 
since he has accompanied her to her lodgings, and 
kissed her at parting. Each time he has lingered lon- 
ger and longer, and before another month he will not 
go till morning. 

This morning she is up two hours earlier than usual 
and off to Broadway without breakfast, hoping to see 
him before she goes to rehearsal. She does see him in 
a carriage, near Canal street, with a proud-looking 
lady, who may be his wife ; but he does not see her ; 
at least he does not appear to. When they meet, she 
mentions the circumstance, and he, with a confused 
manner, tells her the lady is his sister. He is afraid to 
acknowledge it is his wife, for he has declared himself 
a bachelor. 

Six months hence there will be a sudden death in 
the stuccoed building where furnished apartments are 
rented, and the morning papers will chronicle the dis- 
tressing suicide of Ada Allen, a ballet girl at Niblo's. 
The deceased, they will say, was beautiful and well edu- 



Bleecker Street. 377 

cated, but for some time past she had been suffering 
from low spirits, caused, it is thought, by an unfortu- 
nate love aifair. The Coroner's inquest was in accord- 
ance with the above facts. 

Mr. Myrtle, junior partner of the well-known Church 
street firm, reads the item at his breakfast table, and 
spills his coffee and his face undergoes a change. 

"Are you ill, my dear?" asks Mrs. Myrtle. 

"0, no ; I saw the failure of a house that owed us 
largely. I think I would better hurry down toAvn and 
write to the West about it." 

And the seducer and deserter hurries into the street, 
and for fifteen minutes feels like a villain. He loved Ada 
all he was capable of loving — far more than he loves 
his spouse. But he couldn't remain with her ; for some 
of his mercantile friends were talking of his mistress 
on 'Change, and he is a member of a church, and can't 
be scandalized by such stories, which are the worse for 
being true. 

The young fellow who looks darkly out upon the 
fair day, and whom the fresh breeze does not inspire 
with hope, is a child of genius and of melancholy. He 
has cause for despondency ; for he has never had en- 
couragement. He is an artist, and the picture he has 
been painting for three years is finished at last, and no 
one pays the smallest attention to it. The subject is 
singular, the coloring peculiar, the treatment original. 
Hence criticism will be unfavorable ; and he has no 
money to bring his work into notice. At this moment 
he has not money enough for a slender breakfast, but 
he has for two cocktails, and he buys them at the first 
bar-room. He walks gloomily over to the East river, 
and saunters along the pilers, and wonders what will 



378 The Great Metropolis. 

become of liim. "If the worst come to the worst," 
he thinks, "I can jump off, and that will be the end. 
Ambition, poverty, neglect can't trouble me in the 
grave. The river will be the remedy when all else 

fails. But I won't fail, by . I'll struggle on. 

The World shall recognize me. I'll keep on. While 
there is life, there is hope." 

The resolution, inspired by his double drink, saves 
him. He never desponds after that, and he is ulti- 
mately born to fame and fortune. Let no one de. 
nounce cocktails. They have some virtues to offset 
their many vices ; they preserve as well as destroy, 
though they slay hundreds where they save a single 
soul. 

Bleecker street is the place of rendezvous for count- 
less illegitimate lovers. Husbands meet other men's 
wives ; wives meet other women's husbands. And 
young people who love too little or too much for wed- 
lock find consolation in each other's company in that 
peculiar quarter. Bleecker street asks no questions. 
Every man and woman who are together it supposes 
have a right to be together by a higher, if not enacted 
law. Privacy can always be had for a price, and many 
wives are unwedded there. 

The couples who disappear, or are seen in Bleecker 
street are presumed to be mutually fond. No one makes 
comment on their relation, but few are there who do 
not suspect its character. The first thought of many 
an intrigue has arisen from a vision in that neighbor- 
hood. But those who detect others are themselves de- 
tected, and guilt can keep its own secret. 

Many representatives of art of some kind repair to 
Bleecker street for the cheapness of its accommodations 



Bleecker Street. 379 

as well as for the freedom of its life. Poor scribblers 
and scholars, painters and engravers, actors and poets 
may be found in its lodgings. Some fare sumptuous- 
ly on second floors; have wine and dainties and ser- 
vants But most dwell in rear rooms and garrets, and 
lead that careless and reckless, but rather gay career 
for which the artist tribe is famous. They enter their 
apartments at all hours save those that are early, often 
in care of companions less tipsy than they, and often 
in charge of policemen who claim to appreciate the 
ornam.ental above the useful class. 

The rented apartments are scenes of wild carnival 
at times. When their occupants have a "streak of 
luck," they invite boon companions of both sexes ; and 
cards, and chat, and song, and sentiment make wassail 
through the night, and the dawn finds dissipation run- 
ning into riot. 

" I lodge in Bleecker street" is a biography in brief 
If he who says it be poor, the reason is apparent. If 
he be prosperous, his morality is questioned at once. 
And yet Bleecker street is respectable enough, if one 
have no insight into character and conditions. Indeed, 
the thoroughfare is so delicately unique you can hardly 
make any positive statement in regard to it. Many 
very staid and amiable and conventional people in- 
habit it ; but it is so much a favorite with those who 
are a law and a religion to themselves that it has gained 
a reputation for irregularity because of non conformity. 

Whatever Bleecker street is or is not, it is ex- 
tremely broad. That will not be denied. The free- 
dom there of every sort is absolute ; and if you seek 
to be independent of opinion, above scandal, preserved 
from criticism, become a dweller in its confines. You 



380 The Great Metropolis. 

can do, or refrain from doing, what you like. Yon 
can come home at sunrise roaring out bacchanahan 
songs. You can have half-a-dozen dubious relations. 
You can appear half disrobed at noonday, you can 
set public opinion and private prejudice at defiance. 
You can keep a trombone, and play on it at two 
o'clock in the morning. You can select a dozen bass 
singers, and order them to execute the "Bay of Bis- 
cay, 0!" to the inspiration of whisky punch, from 
midnight to early breakfast time, and not a soul will 
complain. 

Every lodger in Bleecker street gives and takes. 
They believe in the largest possible liberty to each in- 
dividual. If Mr. Jones disturbs Mr. Smith to-night, 
Mr. Smith will endeavor to drive Mr. Jones distracted 
the night following. But he won't. The residents of 
Bleecker street are not to be distracted. If they are 
annoyed, they will either bear it philosophically, or go 
somewhere else until the annoyance is over. They 
rudely imitate the Platonic republic ; and if they fail 
of their ideal, they strive to endure the actual with 
the best grace and in the best spirit that their own 
temperaments and the gods will permit. 



CHAPTER XLin. 
NAS SAU STREET. 

There could be no mirror of Manhattan that did not 
present the image of Nassau street — one of the most 
peculiar and striking thoroughfares in New-York. 
Only ten blocks long, it probably contains more va- 
rieties of architecture, business and character than any 
street of its extent in America. Beginning with the 
Treasury and a banking-house, it ends with the Trib- 
une and Tammany hall — though the latter is rapidly 
undergoing the process of ultimate extinction. 

Crooked, contracted, unclean, with high houses and 
low houses, marble palaces and dingy frames, it re- 
minds one more of a street in an old Continental town 
than of a popular thoroughfare in the new Republic. 
But there the resemblance ends ; for in no European 
city — unless in London, perhaps — could such a strange 
stream of humanity be flowing and overflowing for ten 
or twelve hours of every day in the week. 

Nassau street is New- York in miniature even more 
than Broadway. Its contrasts are more observable, 
and its mottled life is more intense. By a sins^ular 
blunder, explicable only by the fact that it was made 
in Gotham, one of the smallest and most inconvenient 
streets in the City has been appropriated to the trans- 



382 The Great Metropolis. 

action of an immense business, to which the same 
space in Canal street would hardly be adequate. 

Think of the Post-office, where nearly a million of 
letters are mailed and received every twenty-four 
hqurs, a number of the largest banking-houses, four or 
five of the leading newspapers, one or two hotels, a 
dozen auction rooms, and hundreds of places of con- 
stant ingress and egress, in an irregular, ill-paved lane, 
less than half a mile long ; and exercise your skepti- 
cism touching the wisdom of the three wise men of 
Gotham who put to sea in a bowl ! My own impression 
is, that their notion of sufficient space, as shown in 
their nautical expedition, was reflected in Nassau street, 
in whose unfitness to do what it is called upon to 
perform I am persuaded that trio had some hand. The 
truth is, however, Nassau street is not so much to 
blame as is the City for outgrowing it, and turning the 
brain of the begrimed little quarter with sights and 
sounds it never expected, in its early years, either to 
hear or see. The great Metropolis has, like the hun- 
gry sea, gone roaring up the arid wastes of the north- 
ern part of the island, and left Nassau street whirling 
in its eddies, hopelessly and helplessly. 

One gets but little impression of what Nassau street 
really is by passing through it, even if he go from end 
to end a dozen times between breakfast and dinner. 
Its unseen life is more curious than that which surges 
over its sidewalks. It has more back-offices, and upper 
stories and creaking stairways, and cobwebby corners, 
and dingy crannies, and undreamed of lofts, and out- 
of-the-way places generally, than could be found in all 
of Dickens's novels. 

Buildings have grown bronzed and gray in the 



Nassau Street. 383 

street, and no mortal save the occupants is conscious 
who inhabits them. Indeed, the persons on the first 
floor are as ignorant of those on the second, and those 
on the second of those on the third, as they are of the 
appearance of the lackeys in Buckingham palace. 

Down at the street-door one may read a bewildering 
number of signs assuming to direct him to B. F. Betts, 
counselor at Law ; George Bishop, publisher ; Henry 
Wisch, fruit-seller; Stephen Craig, artist; J. P. Lud- 
low, dealer in French engravings ; Myron Burt, stock- 
broker; A. B. Weibel, gold-beater; Julius Wilson, 
manufacturer of jewelry ; A. Alexander Wissop, agent 
literary bureau ; Thomas Mai kworth, translator of for- 
eign languages; W. W. Young, Boarding-house bro- 
ker; George Bridges Brown, matrimonial agent, and 
forty other persons and places no one has ever thought 
about or suspected the existence of 

You begin to have a realizing sense of what the 
Egyptian and Cretan labyrinths might have been, if 
you undertake to find any one in the upper stories of 
Nassau street. You wonder why felons for whom 
great rewards have been oifered do not seek sanctuary 
there. If Wilkes Booth had only changed his name 
and taken an office anywhere between Spruce and 
Liberty streets, he would have been forever safe. 
What is the State of Virginia to Nassau street as a 
hiding place ! 

Men there have become bent with years, hollow- 
eyed and wrinkled, going in and out of mysterious 
passages, leading — who knows whither ? And yet no 
one is aware of their occupation, or cares either. They 
seem not to care themselves. They appear born to 
come into and go out of Nassau street all their lives 
long, with no destiny beyond. 



384 The Great Metropolis. 

The being and calling of our fellows are concealed 
from us as the animalcula? in whatever we eat, or touch, 
or breathe. In the vast workshops of cities we hear 
the din and see the smoke ; but we never stop to think 
what the busy creatures busy themselves about. 

I have often penetrated the lofty darknesses of Nas- 
sau street, and returned to the lower light with sur- 
prised remembrances. I have witnessed strange sights 
there that I cannot describe ; beheld strange things 
I may not name. Curious needs has this planet of 
ours, and extraordinary are the demands it makes 
upon the rarest ingenuity of vice. 

Young and old men toiled in rear rooms and gar- 
rets over tasks that taxed the senses and the brain. 
Women did offices of trust because their labor could 
be had cheaper, and children ran hither and thither 
oiling the wheels within wheels that connect Nassau 
street with the machinery of the outer world. 

No where else in New-York are as many persons in 
business crowded together. In a single building are 
professions enough to fit out a good-sized town. No 
corner into which a cat could crawl is unoccupied. 
Every square inch of ground and floor is used to the 
best advantage. The rooms grow smaller and reach 
higher with each succeeding year. A large part of 
New- York seems resolved to wedge itself into the 
miscellaneously crowded quarter; and the building- 
fronts glare with signs, until all the painters appear to 
have set up their specimens there for the admiration 
and confusion of passers-by. 

Such a hodge-podge of occupations, such an ollapo- 
drida of interests, such a salmagundi of people was there 
ever before within such confines ? Persons may keep out 



Nassau Street. 385 

of Broadway ; but they can't out of Nassau street. Due 
concern, or desire, or obligation will lead or drive you 
there every week or two, however isolated or humble 
your life may be. 

It is a strong whirlpool of bankers and newsboys, 
of journalists and beggars, of government officials and 
boot-blacks, of public men and private nobodies, of 
policemen and pretty women, of capitalists and bar- 
keepers, of auctioneers and thieves, of shoulder-hitters 
and courtesans, of poets and rag-gatherers, of artists 
and all sorts of people. And then all nationalities are 
represented; for the Post-office draws foreigners of 
every tongue to look for letters. So your ear is 
greeted with Italian, and German, and Spanish, and 
Dutch, and French, and Portuguese, and even Arabic, 
Turkish, Greek and Chinese drop their strange sylla- 
bles like pebbles into the seething sea. 

Everybody is in haste when he enters Nassau street; 
for no one goes there without business, and no one 
vv-ishes to stay there after he has completed it. It has 
no tide like Broadway. People hurry up and down 
the side-walk and in the street, from one side to the 
other, apparently without any clear perception of what 
they are doing or where they are going. Not so, 
however. There are few idlers or loungers in Nassau 
street. They who fill it have a clear purpose. They 
are in earnest, have motive and their cue, and are 
shrewdly adapting means to ends. 

There each man is emphatically for himself, and 
indifferent to his neighbors. No one considers himself 
bound by the common laws of politeness. No one 
explains or apologizes for mistakes or indecencies. 
They are inevitable to the street which, by reason of 

25 



386 The Great Metropoli?. 

its narrowness and inconvenience, bears all the respon- 
sibility. If you don't want your hat knocked off, or 
your boots trodden on, or your coat torn, or your nose 
thumped, or your eyes put out, don't go to Nassau 
street. They indulge in those pleasantries there in 
self-defense. Hats, and boots, and garments, and 
noses, and eyes have their natural rights, no doubt, 
but you must seek other localities to have them re- 
spected. 

Patience under aifront and injury is the reigning 
and necessary virtue of Nassau street. 

I have seen sensitive and impetuous gentlemen who, 
in the Avenue, would have knocked the fellow down 
that looked displeasure, submit, without a murmur, to 
be hurled against a lamp-post mi til their spine cracked, 
in Nassau street. I have noticed delicate dandies, 
with lavender kids, violets in button-hole, breathing 
dainty odors, upset by an ash-cart, and smile serenely 
in the gutter. I have known nervous capitalists to 
have their pockets picked, without ever turning to 
look at the rogue who robbed them. They cared 
nothing about it. And if they did, the operation in 
which they were engaged was too important to permit 
attention to trifles, or even serious affairs involving 
delay. 

Men who want to borrow millions; who wish to 
mail a letter clandestinely to their mistress; who have 
an article for the Tribune or Post on the national 
debt, designed to electrify the Republic ; who are 
looking for a cheap cake of soap, or a cool glass of 
beer, or are in quest of luncheon, or about to consult 
their lawyer, or sell a picture, or search for a black- 
letter volume, all rush to Nassau street. They can get 



Nassau Street. 387 

anything there, from a splashed pair of trowsers to 
half the five-twenty loan, from a cutaneous disease to 
a seat in Congress. 

In consequence of the extreme narrowness of the 
streets, peddlers and hawkers of cheap wares are per- 
mitted to occupy stands on the sidewalks, and crowd 
pedestrians off. Stationers abound there, and so pla- 
card their goods that you are induced to believe you 
can write all your days, be they as many as Methu- 
selah's, for fifty cents in the currency of the treasury. 
Viands of every kind are advertised liberally, along- 
side of bulletins of the newspaper ofl&ces, informing 
you of attempts on the life of the Pope and Victoria, 
and another revolution in Mexico. 

Newsboys play hide-and-seek between your legs 
while you are endeavoring to grasp the hand of your 
friend, (just returned from Japan,) separated from 
you by a box of books thrown from a truck the mo- 
ment you said "How are you, old boy?" Your com- 
panion offers you a cigar he will guarantee to be im- 
ported ; and, while you are taking your first connois- 
seur-like whiff, it is dashed into the face of an elderly 
man in a white coat, (one of the greatest sharpers in 
Wall street, by the by,) who looks benignly at the 
sparks, and ventures the opinion that it is a warm 
day. 

A malignant urchin in the form of a boot-black, puts 
a "shine" upon your white pantaloons as you are 
wedged into a corner, and coolly asks for fifteen cents 
for "doin' it extray, boss." 

One of the features of Nassau street is its old book- 
stores, where more curious and antique volumes can 
be unearthed than in all the rest of the country. Their 



388 The Great Metropolis. 

proprietors look as if tliey were specially intended for 
the business, being usually old, snuif-taking, seedy, 
abstracted creatures, with soiled fingers, and spectacles 
balanced on the extremities of their nose. They 
occupy dingy quarters, and have a passion for rum- 
maging among worm-eaten, dogs-eared, large-typed 
tomes when they have no customers. Those customers 
are often like themselves — bibliomaniacs, who talk 
erudition to the shop-keepers until they forget what 
they wanted. 

Not a few of the proprietors of the stores are mod- 
ern-looking, well-dressed men, who appear literary, 
but wide-awake and genial — nothing of the Dominie 
Sampson about them. They are of the progressive 
school — men who live in the present as well as the 
past — who think and write, as well as read and quote. 

No single article can do justice to Nassau street ; it 
is so diversified, and unique, and heterogeneously- 
homogeneous. 

Imagine a hundred thousand people going to the 
Post-office and coming away ; twenty thousand hurrying 
to the vast banking quarter that bounds the street on 
the south ; the busy crowd having business with the 
daily press ; the concourse that is hungry and thirsty, 
and hastening to luncheon and drinks ; the multitude 
who seek legal counsel, who need boots and shoes, 
books and papers, pictures and pocket-kni'ves, anything 
and everything, indeed, between love and liquor, lite- 
rature and lager — and you will have some faint notion 
of the immense gathering between Frankfort and 
Wall streets. 

Nassau street has material enough for half a dozen 
volumes^ if it were written up thoroughly ; and Eugene 



Nassau Street. 389 

Sue, (were he alive,) and Dickens, and Wilkie Collins, 
could find better matter for plots there than they have 
ever wrought. How many startling cases at law, how 
many mysterious investments, how many dramatic 
characters, how many profound intrigues, how many 
heroes and heroines full of laughter and tears, would 
they reveal ! 

But the writer, who is too indolent to soar, and too 
weary to examine, is kinder than those geniuses. He 
makes the outlines, and leaves the rest to the imagin- 
ation. 



CHAPTER XLIY. 
THE HOTELS. 

Hotel life as it exists in this country is unknown in 
Europe, and foreigners have no idea of its extent and 
peculiarities. 

In Great Britain and on the Continent, hotels are, 
for the most part, small and quiet, and much more 
home-like than in the United-States. Only strangers 
and travelers occupy them, and a few days or weeks 
includes their longest stay. No one thinks of remain- 
ing in them permanently, least of all with a wife and 
family ; while, in our cities, a hotel is the only home 
that thousands of our citizens know or care to have. 

Americans, although they fancy themselves such, are 
not a domestic people, those residing in cities and towns 
at least. They are strongly attached to their country, 
but not to their own firesides, or to fixed localities usu- 
ally made sacred by associations. 

Wherever an American is to be for twenty-four 
hours, there is his home. He is a kind of civilized 
Bedouin, who carries his home in his trunk, the law 
and the .constitution in his revolver, and his religion in 
his disposition to do as he pleases. 

Americans like to talk of home — to honor it in prose 
and verse; but it is rather a sentimental idea with 
them than a living reahty. They resemble their coun- 



The Hotels. 391 

trjman Payne, author of "Home, Sweet Home." The 
man whose song will always touch the heart and mois- 
ten the eye never had a home; was a wanderer all his 
years, and died at last in a foreign land. 

The American is at home on the back of a camel in 
the midst of an Arabian desert; smoking his pipe on 
the summit of the Himalayas; swinging in the branches 
of the bamboo in India, or whistling " Yankee Doodle" 
among the ruins of the Coliseum. 

In New- York, hotel life has breadth, and variety, 
and uniqueness that it has no where else. It is a pe- 
culiar form of existence, and its characters vary like 
the leaves of Autumn. 

There cannot be less than seven or eight hundred 
hotels, all told, in the Metropolis, though fifty or sixty 
would include those that are very well known. Twen- 
ty-five or thirty of them are considered in every re- 
spect first-class and fashionable; that is, their patrons 
are generally well-dressed, and able and willing to pay 
extravagant prices. Nearly every prominent house 
has its special customers and characteristics, and fur- 
nishes a field for the study of a different phase of hu- 
man nature. 

A popular fallacy of the day is, that one must go to 
the country for comfort. The truth is, that whatever 
is good or dainty, or desirable there, of a material 
kind, is brought to the city. The country is stripped 
to supply the great centers. The farmers and garden- 
ers cannot afford to consume their own products when 
the towns will pay so liberally for the gratification of 
the senses. 

Probably no such luxury can be found anywhere as 
at a New- York hotel, if you have the means and dis- 



392 The Great Metropolis. 

position to pay for it. You can get almost anytliin-:; 
the vegetable or animal kingdom contains. Take your 
seat at the table; fee the waiter; call for whatever the 
Earth bears, and in less than five minutes it will be 
before you. All climes will ripen, all vessels come 
freighted for you from every sea. 

Many of our hotels have national reputations; and, 
at least once a year, American life from all the other 
cities streams through their corridors, chambers, and 
ordinaries. 

At a New- York hotel, you are likely to meet ac- 
quaintances you have not seen for ten or twelve years ; 
the friend that helped you out of that unpleasant diffi- 
culty at San Francisco ; the odd-looking personage 
wdio lighted his cigar from yours at the base of the 
Matterhorn; the blonde beauty who flirted with you 
for a month in Vienna, and disappeared mysteriously 
from the steamer on the Danube. 

The Astor House is probably the best known, the 
m )st historic hotel in the Republic; and, strange to say, 
though 35 years old, it still fully retains its reputation 
as a first-class house. Twenty years ago, the Astor 
monopolized nearly all good hotel-keeping in the coun- 
try, and to visit New-York meant to go there of neces- 
sity. Col. Charles A. Stetson, still the ornamental 
landlord, though his sons are the proprietors, took it a 
few months after its opening. He says he used to 
shake his carpets in Chambers street, and was glad to 
obtain full boarders at three dollars a week. 

All the distinguished men in the country, from Hen- 
ry C;a/ and Daniel Webster down to Gen. Grant and 
Secretary Seward, have been guests of the Astor. 
Stetson is full of reminiscences and anecdotes of famous 



The Hotels. 393 

politicians and statesmen, living and dead, and could 
compile an interesting volume of bis experiences and 
recollections. He is a capital talker, and would have 
made a most popular stump-speaker, — a vocation for 
which he was eminently fitted, and which, for his repu- 
tation's sake, he ought to have embraced. 

The Astor has always been, and is still, the head- 
quarters for politicians, which may be partially ac- 
counted for by the fact that Stetson feels a lively inter- 
est in politics, and that Thurlow Weed was for chirty 
years a boarder in the house. Meetings and caucuses, 
especially of the Republicans, are held there constantly, 
and Weed gave audiences from the first of January to 
the thirty-first of December. 

Many old-fashioned people usually stay at the Astor, 
— those who have been "putting up" there for the last 
quarter of a century, and could not be induced to so- 
journ anywhere else. 

A score or more of wealthy bachelors, from thirty to 
seventy, are generally permanent guests of the Astor, 
which seems, too, to be a favorite with journalists at 
home and abroad, and of many varieties of the litc4'ary 
class. 

The St. Nicholas is an extremely popular caravan- 
sera. Every one goes there ; and in its spacious halls 
and dining-rooms you can encounter the representa- 
tives of every State. Western people have a prefer- 
ence for the St. Nicholas, and southerners used to 
have; but they have lately gone further up Broadway. 
Fast persons affect it a good deal; and you are likely 
to encounter more pinchbeck material there than at 
any other house on the great thoroughfare. 

The hotel is elaborately furnished, but too much 



394 The Great Metropolis. 

given to show and something nearly resembling taw- 
driness. After the late dinner, before the places of 
amusement are open, the halls, and saloon, and read- 
ing-room of the St. Nicholas resemble a human bee- 
hive, and the sidewalk in front of the building is so 
crowded with loungers that it is difficult to pass. 

No hotel in town does a larger or more profitable 
business; and it has already made fortunes for half a 
dozen different proprietors. When it was first opened, 
fifteen or sixteen years ago, it was all the rage ; but 
new houses were built, and the City grew and ex- 
panded, and the tide -"ushed by it to Fourteenth street 
and Madison square. 

The Metropolitan is the resort of Californians and 
people from the new States and Territories, of men 
engaged in mining and mining interests, in quartz- 
crushers and Pacific railways. The patrons of the 
Metropolitan are peculiar and individual-looking; are 
remarkable for bronzed complexions, the consumption 
of tobacco, nervous energy of manner, and liberal dis- 
play of jewelry. They give you the impression of men 
who have made and lost fortunes; who have had 
strange experiences and desperate adventures; who 
would spend the last ten dollars they had in the world 
for a bottle of wine, play poker with you at a thousand 
dollars ante, or fight a duel with you in the dark for 
the sake of the sensation. 

Such are the people most conspicuous about the 
hotel, in the office, on the steps and in the smoking- 
room; but a great many quiet people from the country 
and the large cities fare sumptuously and spend prodi- 
gally at the corner of Broadway and Prince street. 

The New-York, particularly since the War, has been 



The Hotels. 395 

the staying-place of southerners and those who sympa- 
thize with them, — indeed, of the traveling Democracy 
generally, whether for or against the rebels, from every 
point of the compass. Hiram Cranston, the proprietor, 
has long been a noted Democratic politician, and is 
personally known to and popular with the prominent 
members of his party. 

The New-York is a sort of offset to the Astor, and 
Cranston to Stetson ; and its reputation is such that 
the politics of a man who registers his name at that 
house almost ceases to be a matter of doubt. 

The hotel is one of the best kept in the City, and 
attracts many persons, independent of politics, by the 
excellency of its table and the comfort of its internal 
arrangements. 

The Fifth Avenue is, par eminence, tlie great fash- 
ionable hotel of New- York, and is the haunt and home 
of stock operators and gold speculators, where they 
may be found a,fter dinner, when the Mammon temples 
in Broad street have shut their doors. New-England 
and the residents of this State go there a great deal ; 
and of late, Chicago, Cincinnati and the other Western 
cities have sought refuge at that shimmering shrine. 
Among the great hotels on the American plan, the 
Fifth Avenue is the mode ; and consequently inter- 
spersed with really elegant people, one encounters there 
some absurd specimens of parvenuism. 

Ill-breeding never appears so ill as when it is heavily 
gilded; and the well-fed guests of the Fifth Avenue 
are often amused, and then disgusted, with the preten- 
tious commonalty they cannot escape. 

The corridors of that hotel swarm like those of the 
St. Nicholas; but no one down stairs ever talks about 



396 The Great Metropolis. 

anything but the closing rate of gold, and the next 
contest in Erie. The last bulletins are always on the 
walls; and dozens of men are constantly scanning 
them, and wondering what turn the market will take 
to-morrow. 

On the second floor, the scene is different; for there 
the other sex hold sway, and the men, weary of talking- 
business, ascend to the handsome, brilliantly-lighted 
parlors, and chat and flirt with the women they may 
chance to recognize. The gentle fair are elaborately 
attired, look their fiiirest, and act their sweetest, — fre- 
quently failing of interest by their excessive effort to 
be engaging, — while their gallants seem delighted, 
and tell their fashionable charmers everything but the 
truth. 

The hours from 8 to 11 and 12 o'clock are devoted 
to gossip, gallantry and gayety ; and no other hotel in 
the country, outside of the watering-places, presents 
such a field for fashionable flirtation as the Fifth Avenue 
after dinner. 

The Brevoort, corner of Fifth avenue and Clinton 
place, is on the European plan, and one of the quietest 
and most expensive hotels in the City. Foreigners gen- 
erally go there, though a number of families make their 
home within its comfortable walls. It is a small house, 
but makes as much pretension to style and elegance as 
almost any hotel in town. The names of ministers 
from abroad, consuls and diplomats are generally found 
on its register, and persons of title are very common 
among its patrons. 

The Barcelona, in Great Jones street, is no more. It 
was a Spanish hotel, and exclusively patronized by the 
Cubans and Spanish who visit us. English was rarely 



The Hotels. 397 

spoken in the house, which had Spanish clerks, cham- 
ber-maids and waiters, and staying there reminded you 
of your travels in Arragon and Andalusia. If you did 
not understand the language of Calderon and Cervantes, 
and relish oil and olives, you were wise to keep away 
from the Barcelona. 

The Barcelona is now the Maltby. It is patronized 
by Americans, and is on the European plan. 

The fashionable European houses, are the St. James, 
Everett, Hoffman, St. Denis, Grammercy-Park, Claren- 
don, and a dozen others which have no distinctive fea- 
tures. They are well kept and patronized ; and they 
who live there think their particular hotel the best 
in New- York. 

The Grammercy-Park, Union-Place, Clarendon, 
Spingler and Westminster are little resorted to by the 
miscellaneous public, but have their own class of pat- 
rons, many of whom are private families. 

The second-class houses are far more numerous than 
the first-class, and among them French's, Lovejoy's, 
the Merchants', Western and Courtlandt-street, are the 
most frequented. They are said to be comfortable ; 
though the class of persons you meet there are not apt 
to be as cultivated and agreeable as at the Broadway 
houses. You must pay something for your company 
as well as your accommodations; and most persons in 
this country are willing to do so, if they have the 
money, or can borrow it. 

New- York generally is a very expensive place, but 
you can live cheaply if you are willing to go where 
your fastidiousness is not consulted, and cleanliness is 
not ranked second to godliness. Thousands of persons 



398 The Great Metropolis. 

keep up a certain respectability of appearance here on 
a slender income; but they suffer more from their false 
pride than they would be willing to in a worthier 
cause. 

If many a trusting Don Cleofas would take hold of 
Asmodeus' cloak, follow him in his flight to the steeple 
of Grace Church, and gaze at the unroofed hotels, he 
would have his faith shattered and his peace poisoned. 
He would see that countless men who wore the bays 
of belief concealed beneath them what loved and trust- 
ed women had put there. 

Hotel life is agreeable and desirable for masculine 
celibates; but he is unwise who takes his wife and 
family there for a permanent home. How many wo- 
men can trace their first infidelity to the necessarily 
demoralizing influences of public houses, — to loneli- 
ness, leisure, need of society, interesting companions, 
abundance of opportunity, and potent temptation! 

There is a happy medium between ever-jealous hus- 
bands and secure simpletons. Master Ford was made 
ridiculous by his suspicions; but I am afraid Falstaff's 
story was not fully told. 

Women have too much natural craving for mental 
excitements, too much fondness for sensational ex- 
periences. They are a thousand times better and 
purer and less selfish than men. But their nearest 
friends and protectors have no right to expose their 
light garments to the fire, and wonder they are 
scorched. 

Love and knowledge are the best guardians of every 
woman's purity and peace; but we should all remem- 
ber there are crimes made venial by the occasion, and 
temptations that nature cannot master nor forbear. 



CHAPTER XLY. 
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

William Cullen Bryant is the Nestor of the Me- 
tropolitan press, and one of the best known men in the 
country. His name is familiar to all Europe as a poet, 
litterateur and journalist, and well it may be, for he is 
one of the best types of the editorial profession in the 
New World. 

William Cullen Bryant's name is almost a household 
word throughout the land. Yet such is the indiffer- 
ence and absorbing nature of New- York life that when 
he walks up Broadway, as he often does, not one per- 
son out of five thousand who pass would recognize 
him. Say, however, "There goes Bryant," and almost 
every one would turn to gaze in the direction indi- 
cated. No reputation secures to a man in New-York 
what Horace considered the assurance of fame : To be 
pointed out as you go by, and hear 'That is he!' 
Giants of celebrity, monsters of notoriety may pace 
from Bowling Green to Madison Square, and no quick 
whisper, no pointing finger, no hurried comment 
wounds their sensibility or flatters their self-love. 

Bryant, born November 3, 1794, in Cummington, 
Hampshire county, Massachusetts, is the son of Peter 
Bryant, a physician of the place, a man of fine literary 
and artistic tastes, who taught the boy to love poetry 



400 The Great Metropolis. 

in his earliest years. The affection existing between 
William, and his father was of very ardent even ro- 
mantic character, as is shown in some of the first verses 
the poet wrote. Like Cowley, Milton and Pope, Bryant 
wooed the muses as soon as many boys learn to read. 
He might well say, with the author of the " Essay on 
Man": 

" While yet a child, nor yet /inkown to fame, 
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." 

In his tenth year he wrote verses, and in his fifteenth 
published them. They were so very clever that few 
persons would believe they were his. They could not 
be convinced such extraordinary productions were the 
work of a boy of his age, and a rigid examination was 
necessary to satisfy the skeptical. In precocity he 
closely resembled Chatterton ; writing " Thanatopsis," 
considered his best poem, and by many critics at home 
and abroad, the best of American poems — in his nine- 
teenth year. "Thanatopsis" remained in MS. for 
three or four years, and was printed in the North 
uimerican Review^ in 1817, when it gained at once a 
wide reputation, and has grown so popular since that 
many of its polished lines have been worn threadbare 
by quotation. 

Bryant iu his thirtieth year, I think, removed to 
New-York, and in 1826 connected himself with the 
Evening Post,, with which he has remained ever since. 
For a number of years he was a very hardworking jour- 
nalist, writing the leading articles, especially on political 
subjects, during two whole decades. The Post,, in 
those days, was Federal, but Bryant, always Democratic 
(in the true sense of the term) in his views and sym- 
pathies, did much to make the paper reflect his opin- 



William Cullen Bryant. 401 

ions. Under his administration it grew to be a Demo- 
cratic journal, continuing such until the question of 
slavery entering into politics gave birth to the Repub- 
lican party, of which Bryant became a firm but inde- 
pendent supporter. 

During the past twelve or fifteen years, many of 
which he has spent abroad, he has rested somewhat 
from his labors. Now-a-days he rarely writes an edi- 
torial, leaving the management of the Post to Charles 
Nordhoflf and Augustus Maverick; but indulges his 
journalistic habit by writing on minor topics, with a 
pertness and vigor not to be expected of a man more 
than forty years in the editorial harness. 

His literary life is too familiar to speak of at any 
length. In addition to a book of poems published 
thirty years ago, which was warmly praised by the 
British reviews, he printed a volume, in 1849 entitled 
"Letters of a Traveller," made up of his correspond- 
ence to the Post Although a journalist and accus- 
tomed to daily writing, he is not fond of literary com- 
position, seldom attempting it unless there is some- 
thing he particularly wants to say. Poetry, with him 
IS not only a labor of love but a love of labor He 
composes with the greatest difficulty, owing to an ex- 
treme fastidiousness that refuses to be satisfied. Like 
Pope and Campbell, he is always anxious to alter and 
revise, and is ever finding what he conceives to be 
ha|3p:er words of expression. It is said he wrote 
"Thanatopsis" a hundred times, and that he now has a 
copy of the poem with various changes from the pn1)- 
hshed form. It is often asked why he does not write 
more ; but those who know him wonder not at his in- 
frequent acpomplishment of verse. Poetry is a mental 



402 The Great :,lETr:oroLis. 

agony with him. He takes as much pains and toils 
over his lines as Jean Jacques did over his prose, or 
Tennyson over his verse. He has almost invariably 
declined to furnish poems for college commencements, 
public occasions and national festivals ; his talent not 
being of the ready or spontaneous sort. The sole in- 
stance I know of his departing from the established 
rule of his life Avas when he furnished two short poems 
to the Ledger^ for which Robert Bonner paid him the 
extraordinary sum of $3,000. He has none of the 
cu7'iosa felicitas that distinguishes many literary men, 
particularly those who have been bred to journalism, 
or who have long followed it as a profession. 

I know a score of clever fellows in the vicinity of 
Printing-House square who would write a drama, half 
a dozen pieces of verse, a story, two or three columns 
of paragraphs, and a score of letters to the country 
press while Bryant was inditing a short poem. I am 
bound to say, however, his work would better bear 
critical examination than theirs. 

His travels have been quite extensive. He has been 
abroad five or six times, having visited every part of 
the continent, Egypt, Syria, Judea, and other portions 
of the East. Like a true journalist he has alw^ays cor- 
responded with the Post, making there a record of his 
impressions of the people and places he has visited. 
His letters tire unusually interesting, as they would 
naturally be, coming from a man of such refined and 
cultivated tastes. He is thoroughly acquainted Avith 
art, a passionate lover of nature, a poet in his life no 
less than in his written word. He enjoys travel and 
nature more than almost anything else, and finds, like 
the melancholy Jacques, sermons in stones, books in 



William Cullen Bryant. 493 

tlie running brooks, and good in everything. He has 
been and is the intimate friend of a number of the best 
artists at home and abroad, and has all the artistic feel- 
ing and sympathy of the plastic tribe. 

His domestic tastes are remarkable for such a wan- 
derer. In 1845 he purchased a beautiful piece of 
property on Long Island, near Roslyn, and has ever 
since been cultivating it with the greatest care. It is 
an idyllic poem in nature. His charming home is lit- 
erally embowered in roses, sheltered in the midst of 
the most luxuriant plants of every variety. He spends 
much of his time with his flowers, and while he walks 
among and watches them with a floral affection, his 
youth seems restored, and his years sparkling back- 
ward in the morning sunshine. He is a widower now ; 
but all his life long he has been devoted to his family 
— he has two daughters — and a model of all that is 
lovable in the relation of husband and father. Of 
late years he passes much of his time in his old home- 
stead, making visits to the Post office only once oi 
twice a week, and then remaining but a short time. 

Personally, Bryant looks like one of the ancient 
patriarchs. His hair and beard, which he wears long, 
are of silvery white and of silken softness, and he 
might well sit for a model of Calchas. Though his 
face is deeply wrinkled, he is erect, lithe and vigorous 
as a man of thirty and, in his seventy-fourth year, is 
probably the best preserved New-Yorker in the neigh- 
borhood of Manhattan. 

Men usually die here of old age before they are 
forty, but Bryant is an exception to those who sur- 
round him. Few young men can walk so far, take so 
much exeixise, or do s>o much work as he can to-day ; 



404 The Great Metropolis. 

and he attributes his extraordinary strength to the ab- 
stemiousness of his life and his passion for nature, 
which has caused him to pass much of his time in the 
open air. He is inclined to be shy, albeit he enjoys 
congenial society, and has spent many happy days 
with Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, William 
Leggett, James K. Paulding and other noble fellows 
and beaux esprits whom he has survived. He is a 
most entertaining talker, and it is a rare treat to listen 
to his reminiscences of the distinguished dead and the 
historic spots he has known so welL He is a fine 
specimen of the American gentleman of the past gene- 
ration; and yet he is so hale and hearty there is 
good reason to believe he may brighten the next gene- 
ration with his silvery haii's. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 
THE MARKETS. 

The domestic markets of New-York are the best, 
and the market-houses the worst, in the country. The 
two are antipodes. They remind one of delicate and 
delicious viands served on broken and unwashed 
dishes and soiled table-cloths. Who can enter any one 
of our dozen market-houses, see their profusion and 
excellence and variety of supply, and contrast them 
with their surrounding dinginess and squalor, without 
a feeling of disappointment approaching disgust? 
There is hardly an exception. Fulton and Washington 
markets reflect all the rest. Jefferson is little better 
than Catharine, Union than Clinton, Franklin than 
Centre ; but Tompkins is deserving of consideration. 

It is well known that no people under the sun have 
so many material comforts as Americans. As a nation, 
we are luxurious, self-indulgent, extravagant. We are 
the modern Assyrians. We will have what money will 
purchase, come what may. No true son of the Repub- 
lic believes he shall ever suffer from deprivation ; for 
he has faith enough in himself and his country to think 
all the necessaries and many of the superfluities of life 
will be always furnished. The poorest American often 
fares better than the richest of the ancients. The 
salaried clerk and the retail tradesman sit at tables. 



406 The Great Metropolis. 

that would have shamed those of Caligula and Cleopa- 
tra. The barbaric splendor is less, but the material 
comfort is more. We melt no pearls in vinegar ; but 
we melt our incomes in dainty superabundance. 

In our mode of subsistence there is a wonderful 
equality. The salesman wdth fifteen hundred a year 
has the same bill of fare as his employer worth half a 
million under the hammer. 

Foreigners are surprised at the profusion of our 
markets, and still more at the number of people 
who purchase at them. What in Europe only a cer- 
tain class would buy seems here to be within the 
means of all. Within the purse would be the apter 
expression ; for its contents are the measure of our 
wants. 

Market-going is unpleasant and prosaic. It is the 
soberness and seriousness of marriage after the ro- 
mance and illusion of passion ; the standing behind 
the scenes after the close of the beguiling play ; the 
entering the kitchen before the arrangement of the 
feast. 

I have had much experience as a market-goer ; and, 
the more I go, the less I like it. There may be those 
who relish kissing an eternal farewell to delightful 
dreams, leaping from their cosy beds at early dawn, 
and trudging off to a confusion of buyers and sellers, 
to the inspection and purchase of roasts and birds, of 
sirloins and side-pieces, of carrots and cauliflowers, of 
lettuce and lobsters. But I am not of them. 

I infinitely prefer total ignorance of the price of 
marketing, the place of its sale, and the mode of its 
preparation. I like to go to breakfast or dinner at 



The Markets. 407 

my entire leisure ; look at the bill ; call for what I 
want ; pay for it ; and think no more about it. 

To be independent of the rate of provisions is to 
enjoy a freeman's privilege ; to hear no quotations of 
the substantial of existence is a blessed immunity. 
Ye who think otherwise, consign yourselves to a pri- 
vate boarding-house, and be taught the sagacity of my 
opinion by bitter experience. 

I have known men who refrained from matrimony 
because it brought among its lesser woes the woe of 
market-going. They fancied they could bring them- 
selves to endure the great sacrifices and responsibili- 
ties it imposed ; but the prosaic littleness of bartering 
with butchers and hucksters was beyond their bearing. 
Unlike many men, they were unwilling their wives 
should go to market, and they were right. If the 
larder must be supplied by household devotion, and 
the servants be incompetent, as they usually are for 
such service, the melancholy duty obviously belongs 
to the proper head of the family. Women always en- 
dure the greater burthens of wedlock. They wear 
petticoats, and bear children. Let their husbands go 
to market. 

Let us, you and me, reader, go to market, — ideally 
I mean, — and see how they do such things in the Me- 
tropolis. 

Washington and Fulton markets are the best known 
and most frequented ; but they are all alike, and one 
will answer for all. We can visit any, and see what- 
ever is to be seen. Call it by the name you prefer. 
Here it is, and well attended, though the sun has not 
yet risen. 

There is little order or regularity in the stalls. The 



408 The Great Metropolis. 

buildings arc old, rickety, uncleanly, patched and 
added to until they seem like old £ irnicnts made 
older and more unsightly by excess of bad mending. 

We cannot help thinking of the model market- 
houses of Philadelphia, — so clean, so spacious, so airy, 
and' so sweet. The City of Brotherly Love may be an 
overgrown village ; but its market-houses are what 
they should be, and its municipal government won't 
steal more than fifty cents on the dollar. Would we 
could say the same of Gotham ! 

But, if the houses are poor and paltry, their contents 
are rich and superabundant. Nothing is lacking to 
gratify the palate, — to delight the most jaded appetite. 
The best beef, mutton, veal and lamb the country 
affords are displayed upon the stalls. Those roasts 
and steaks, those hind-quarters, those cutlets, those 
breasts with luscious sweetbreads, would make an 
Englishman hungry as he rose from the table. Those 
delicate bits, so suggestive of soups, would moisten 
the mouth of a Frenchman. Those piles of rich and 
juicy meats would render an Irishman jubilant over 
the memory of his determination to emigrate to a 
land where potatoes were not the chief article of food. 

What an exhibition of shell-fish, too ! Crabs, and 
lobsters, and oysters in pyramids, yet dripping with 
sea-water, and the memories of their ocean-bowers 
fresh about them. And vegetables, of every kind, 
and fruits, foreign and domestic, from the largest to 
the smallest, from the rarest to the commonest, from 
the melon to the strawberry, from the pine apple to 
the plum. Fish from the river and mountain stream, 
from the sea and the lake. Fowls and game of all 
varieties, from barnyard and marsh, forest and prairie. 



i 



The Markets. 409 

eyerythiiig that can appeal to and gratify the epicurean 

sense. 

We think of the consolatory reflection of the newly 
landed Milesian, that no man can starve where pro- 
visions are so plenty, when we walk through the mar- 
kets and see the overwhelming contributions. 

Everything is exceedingly high, considering the 
quantity ; but, in a great centre like this, there are so 
many mouths to be fed, so many consumers, and so 
few producers, it is not strange prices are at the top 
ol the scale. 

People complain of quotations, and declare they 
can't live. But they do, and keep buying the best the 
market affords ; for what it affords they can, or do, at 
least. It is easy to show on paper and by figures, 
how people can't live if the necessities of existence 
go much higher. But the necessities steadily advance, 
and the bills of mortality do not increase. Nature 
and requirement have a way of answering the question, 
How shall I live ? that is mysterious, but quite satis- 
factory. 

Rates decline with the hours. You can buy at 9 
thirty per cent, less than you could at 5, but not so 
excellently ; for the market is now stripped of its 
choicest and best. The ordinary rule is reversed in 
market-going. They who are prosperous are the 
earliest customers, and the poor are the latest. It 
is the fashion of the fashionable to purchase when the 
sun is low and the price is high. They send their 
stewards, housekeepers and caterers before the hum- 
ble in circumstances dare invade the sanctity of 
elevated figures. 

At this timely hour, we see the caterers of the great 



410 The Great Metropolis. 

hotels among the first visitors. They are on the alert 
for the choicest beef, the fattest mutton, the freshest 
cutlets, the earliest fruits and vegetables; for the rep- 
utation and patronage of their houses depend upon 
the excellence of their table. The Fifth Avenue, 
St. Nicholas, Brevoort, Metropolitan, Astor, Hoflfman, 
St. James, and all the others are represented ; and the 
indefatigable steward of Delmonico is never behind. 

Butchers and gai'deners have orders in advance to 
keep such and such things for the hotels and restau- 
rants ; but those establishments deem it necessary to 
have an artist on the spot. The rivalry is too sharp 
to admit of implicit faith in promises, and market- 
people are vulgarly venal often. 

They who purchase for the denizens of Fifth avenue 
and other fashionable quarters, are stirring betimes. 
They select without regard to price, and are, therefore, 
most desirable customers. It is not always so, how- 
ever. Some of the wealthiest New-Yorkers are eco- 
nomical to niggarduess in their dealings ; chaffer and 
cheapen for half an hour ; go from stall to stand ; and 
lose more time in the endeavor to save a few pennies, 
than would serve, if rightly employed, to earn dollars. 
Several of our millionaires are notorious at Jefferson 
and Fulton markets. They will not even trust their 
servants, and buy such provender as is usually sold to 
keepers of cheap boarding-houses in East Broadway. 
The same persons will spend prodigally for their 
vanity ; but for their private table, unless there be in- 
vited guests, they are sparing of food. 

The colored servants (always good, but expensive 
market-goers) of gambling-houses and bagnios, are 
among the generous patrons, and they are the most 



The Markets. 411 

monetarily reckless of all. They do not use their own 
means, and their employers stint them not. The 
quality of their purchases, not the quantity of their 
outlay, is impressed upon them ; and they little care 
for complaint on that score. 

The late customers, as I have said, are the penurious 
or the poor. They go when prices have fallen ; when 
the best articles have disappeared ; when prospects of 
bargains have brightened. The middle classes, so far 
as circumstances are concerned, attend at medium 
hours. The really indigent tarry from obligation, and 
the parsimonious from election. 

After 7 or 8 o'clock, the delicacies and desirables are 
not to be had. Then eggs are suspicious ; butter po- 
tent ; vegetables wilted ; meats irresponsible ; fish 
uncertain ; fruits deceptive. 

The moral tone of dealers lowers with the advance 
of morning. A butcher who is undoubtedly honest at 
sunrise, will cheat you without hesitation at 10 o'clock. 
The vegetable woman who would keep all the com- 
mandments before 6, would break almost any of them 
for money after 9. 

The latest and hardest customer is the cheap board- 
ing-house keeper. She (for that is her sex generally) 
is resolved on buying much for little ; and the quantity 
of leather steaks, highly perfumed butter, limed eggs, 
green fruit and unsavory vegetables she carries off, 
awakens sympathy with her boarders, and uneasiness 
respecting their digestion. She is fond of saying she 
knows what's what ; but I don't believe her patrons 
do. If they are so endowed, they must regard igno- 
rance as bliss. 

Occasional visitors are the infatuated strangers who 



412 The Great Metropolis. 

consider markets among the lions of the Metropolis 
We all like to know how our neighbors live — it is a 
subtle as well as interesting problem — and the curioua 
strangers seem to understand the question in a materia] 
light. They wander from one end of the market* 
house to the other ; ask prices ; handle meals and 
vegetables ; criticise them ; make inquiries of every 
kind ; wonder and speculate ; and return to their 
hotels with a better appetite for breakfast, because 
they believe they have done their duty. 

Other visitors are the young women who appear 
leaning heavily on masculine arms, looking fond and 
happy and enthusiastic. They never release their es- 
corts for a moment. They pout and blush, and glance 
significantly out of the corners of their bright eyes. 
They must be in love with their companions, or they 
wouldn't act so. 

They are. They are new-made wives. ITarry oi 
Julius gets up like a true gallant, and goes to market, 
begging Lucy or Harriet to lie still and sleep until he 
returns. But she won't do anything of the sort. 
How could she sleep in the absence of lier darling 
husband? So she accompanies him, and, when they 
return, she either prepares or superintends his break- 
fast, and they sit down like two doves to their morn- 
ing meal. 

In a few weeks a change comes over the spirit of 
their dream. The young wife doesn't go any more. 
She lies in bed ; sleeps like a dormouse, and is cross 
when awakened even with a kiss. At the end of six 
months, Harry or Julius holds down the pillow, and 
she is compelled to provide for the household. 

Fulton market is famous for its oysters, and Dorian 



The Markets. 413 

is the oyster man of all others. For twenty years he 
has been here, and his shell-fish are the best on the 
Planet. It is strange the saloons there are patronized so 
liberally by a class you would never expect to find at 
such an uninteresting place. But it is the fashion to 
go to Fulton market, and that fact, more than the ex- 
cellence of what you get, preserves the extraordinary 
custom. The people you meet at Delmonico's, you see 
at Dorian's — men of wealth, and women of society; 
fastidious scholars, and authors of renown. 

Into those plain and noisy saloons go models of 
elegance and extremes of mode — the money king of 
Wall, the great importers of Beaver, the famous ship- 
ping merchants of South street, the belles of ]\Iad- 
ison avenue, and the staid clergymen of Brooklyn. 
Vanderbilt, Drew, Belmont, Stewart, Bellows and 
Yinton, Beecher, Greeley, Tyng, John Morissey, Mrs. 
Stanton, Fanny Fern, the venerable Gulian C. Yer- 
planck, Moses H. Grinnell — every body, high, low and 
in middle station, are patrons of the market. 

If you wish to see one of the peculiar phases of 
New-York life, go to Dorian's at lunch time, and ob- 
serve, amid its clatter and confusion, what fair and 
expensively attired women, what distinguished and 
gifted men, you will meet there. About those little 
tables, over those delicious oysters, what strange stories 
have been told, what heart-histories revealed, what 
secrets of the soul poured into sympathetic ears ! Ful- 
ton market has a history in itself, and Dorian is its 
central and commanding figure. 

The evening markets are almost entirely democratic. 
They have no grades, no visitors at different periods. 
The humble and common -place patronize them gen- 



414 The Great Metropolis. 

erally ; tlie wealthy seldom. They are the resort of 
blacklegs and courtesans, often, who make assignations 
there, and leer, and wink, and act indecently when 
they dare. Such markets are a confusion of bad man- 
ners, and high voices, and familiar dealers, and vulgar 
customers, and over-dressed people. 

We won't go there, reader. We'll leave those who 
like such places to go in our stead. We'll be exclu- 
sive, and touch hands, and part here until to-morrow. 
Aye, to-morrow ; for to-morrow never comes. 



CHAPTER XLYII. 
THE POST-OFFICE. 

The New- York post-office is characteristic of the 
City — an indirect way of saying it is as bad as it well 
can be. Governmental slowness, added to municipal 
carelessness, makes blundering unavoidable and failure 
magnificent. 

In no other place than the Metropolis could the gen- 
eral post-office have been kept in an old church, a nar- 
row and crowded street, and an out-of-the-way locality, 
for a whole generation. Something more than stu- 
pidity is required for that; something more than indif- 
ference to the public interest; and that something 
more, which is dishonesty, turns to fruit on every bush 
on the island of Manhattan. The people have com- 
plained and clamored year after year. Everybody 
knew and said the post-office was a nuisance. But 
nuisances are cherished and perpetuated here, as Broad- 
way, the police system, the City Hall, the street-cars, 
the unbridged rivers, the unventilated theaters for in- 
stance; and the post-office, having been universally de- 
clared a nuisance, was by divine right entitled to remain 
such. Whenever removal has been determined on ; 
whenever the citizens were likely to be advantaged, 
long purses were opened, and before the glitter of coin 
the prospect of change was lost. But the World moves. 



41 G The Great Metropolis. 

We now have reason to hope that we shall have a new 
post-office during the century ; and we are resigned to 
continued annoyance out of consideration for our 
posterity. 

What a human bee-hive is the old Dutch Church in 
Nassau street, bounded by Liberty and Cedar! An 
entire stranger would think that the big and broad 
church to which so many anti-creedists belong. All 
the lower part of town runs in and through it, and 
overflows with the rising tide that pours out at its 
swarming door-ways. Not all the churches in the City 
have so many worshipers, such earnest, devout, regular 
attendants. Interest preaches in that pulpit, and hu- 
man nature goes to hear the preacher; for he charms 
with the dreariest themes and the shrillest voice. His 
is the universal religion that requires no teaching, un- 
derstood alike in the temples of Boodha and Brahma, 
of Jupiter and Jehovah. When he opens his lips to shriek 
or thunder, every ear is stretched, and every breast 
leaps to listen. 

That popular church is the general post-office, which 
has fourteen stations or branches in different quarters 
of the town; employs nearly five hundred clerks and 
managers, about three hundred outside attaches, and 
does more business than any other three offices in the 
country. It has about six thousand boxes, and yields 
to the Government, above all expenses, a million and 
a half of dollars per year, — an income that is regularly 
increasing. All the other offices of the United-States 
about pay their expenses; the department depending 
for its sole profit upon New- York. 

Nearly one million of letters are delivered every 
week, and over fifty millions every year; while a hun- 



The Post-office. 417 

dred tons of mail matter pass througli the office each 
twenty-four hours. In 1854 the amount was about 
eighteen tons, showing an increase of more than five 
hundred per cent, in thirteen years. Of money orders 
thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars are sent, and 
about sixty thousand cashed per week. Of stamps 
eight thousand dollars are sold per day, or more than 
two million six hundred thousand per annum. The 
registering department does business enough for an 
ordinary office, from seven to fifteen millions worth of 
bonds being registered on steamer days. 

Forty -five or fifty regular mails leave, and about the 
same number are received every day. Twenty-five 
mail steamers sail from here every week ; all of them 
carrying heavy mails, especially those for foreign 
ports. 

From these facts and figures some idea may be ob- 
tained of the immense business at the New-York office, 
and the need of intelligence, system and fidelity in 
every department. It is useless to say they are not to 
be found ; nor will they be whila the post-office is 
merely part of the political machinery of the Republic. 
The department has been but a partial success here 
from the beginning, and grave doubts are entertained 
of its ever being what it should until it is placed in 
the hands of private parties who can be held responsi- 
ble, as express companies are, for failures or losses. 

One of the great defects of our country is its postal 
system. Mails are as uncertain as to-morrow's sky, 
(give me credit for not making the time-honored pun,) 
and to rely on them is like putting your trust in silver 
mines. The City mails here are particularly deranged. 
You can send a letter to Boston, or Albany, or Chicago, 



418 The Great Metropolis. 

with a tolerable certainty of its reacliing its destination 
some time. But if you mail a missive from your oflQce 
in Pine or William street to your friend in Grammercy 
park, or Lexington avenue, or direct a note to your 
cousin round the corner, the chances of its ever being 
heard from are slight. The time usually occupied in 
transitu hetweeu "down" and " up town " is 24 hours 
to 24 days; and men have been known to visit Eu- 
rope and return before a city letter at a mile's distance 
could reach them. Such are the blessings of a repub- 
lican postal system. 

The American people, being the most intelligent, 
are naturally the greatest letter-writers on the Globe. 
It is often an event in the old World to get or read a 
letter. But here children indite epistles, and every 
cross-roads has its post-office. The man who has not 
received a letter has not been discovered, though, if he 
exists, he lives in the interior of Arkansas or the East- 
ern part of Louisiana. 

If you take your stand at the corner of Liberty and 
Nassau streets any day between the hours of 9 and 6, 
you will imagine half of the planet has fallen in love 
with the other half, and is telling the loved half of the 
fact every minute. Stand firmly, hold to something, 
or you will be swept off your feet as you are by the 
under-current at Long Branch, by the tide of swift 
passers-by. Hundreds of people of every sort hurry 
by into the vestibule ; hurry out, and disappear. Some 
seek letters ; some are mailing them. Some want stamps; 
some want information ; but all have urgent business, 
and hasten and fret as if they had bought a through 
ticket for Heaven, and they had hardly time fer the 
last train. 



The Post-office. 419 

Within you observe the long lines of men and boys 
with money in their hands, earnest-faced, yet patient, 
waiting for their turn at the stamp-windows. At one 
window any number of stamps can be had; at the 
other sums of one dollar and upwards only. The links 
of the chain fall off at the head and increase at the tail 
For hours it is about the same length. But as the 
hands on the large clock at the end of the Cedar street 
hall creep round toward 5 o'clock, the throng becomes 
a mere group. 

To the north of the Nassau street entrance are boxes 
labeled "City," "Eastern States," "Western States 
and territories," "Northern States and Canada," 
"Southern States," and into those, letters are thrust so 
rapidly that the apertures are almost choked at times. 
What a deluge of envelopes of every hue to every 
point of the compass? What can they all contain? 
What can all those people find to write about? How 
industrious Americans are ! What a mania they have 
for wasting pen, ink and paper ! Have they an inter- 
est in paper mills or stationers' establishments that they 
thus throw themselves into expression? 

The boxes are constantly thumped and the clerks 
thrust out their hands full of matter, and dart to an- 
other number, and empty that, and fly to a third, and 
deliver to the messengers who receive and depart 
without end. What host-s of correspondence from all 
over the habitable Globe ! Advice from India, quota- 
tions from St. Petersburg, questions from Constantino- 
ple, warnings from Frankfort, remittances from Vienna, 
information from Berlin, orders from Smyrna, gossip 
and love messages from Paris, friendship reaffirmed 
from London ; business intelligence and sympathy 



420 The Great Metropolis. 

from every clime and zone. This is indeed civilization, 
enlightenment, when every man in any part of the 
World can communicate with his fellows on the other 
side of the planet, across deserts and seas, in lands the 
belief in whose existence is only a matter of faith. 

There are the general delivery and the window for 
advertised letters. They are besieged all day long. 
No one who is quite indifferent calls for letters ; but 
the clerks are enough so to make up for the interest of 
the outsiders. 

Post-office clerks are models of unconcern if not rude- 
ness, all the country over. In that particular they are 
in advance of all other government employes, of bank 
officers, of railway underlings, I have often believed 
they were born only to have their noses pulled ; and 
it is a great pity they so often miss their destiny. It 
is wonderful how such dull fellows can be so ingeni- 
ously offensive. All the capacity they have is directed 
to disobligation. The study of their lives seems to be 
to offend. If Caligula's destructive wish had re- 
ferred merely to the class I have named, he would 
have been a true philanthropist. I would vote for 
him to-day for dictator of New- York. 

"Letter for Wra. B. Haskins !" The clerk runs over a 
pile of letters much as professors of legerdemain do a 
pack of cards, and throws them back without reply. 
Time was when they would hurl " nothing" at your 
head as they would a missile at an enemy ; but that is 
considered needless politeness now. Perhaps the 
question is repeated quietly more than once ; and the 
clerk, by way of reply, insults the questioner. It was 
a wise precaution to make postal windows small, if the 
prevention of clerks' heads from much merited punch- 



The Post-office. 421 

ing were deemed desirable. Few persons who inquire 
for letters would be so treated if the insolent behind 
the partition understood that insult would meet with 
punishment 

What becomes of all the advertised letters ? Nearly 
half that are asked for are either gone or never found. 

Is it that names are too much alike, or that clerks 
are too lazy to look for them ? I have frequently ap- 
plied for such letters at the New- York Post-office, and 
never yet obtained one. Perhaps itis thought enough 
to advertise without delivering them. 
' The general delivery is a study, and a sad one. 
They who call there usually have needs of the purse 
or needs of the heart. They are for the most part 
strangers or in adversity or misfortune of some kind. 
No one, unless a clerk, could have failed to notice the 
anxious or pale faces that go to the window day after 
day, and the expression of disappointment and pain 
that follows the turning of the back, the shaking of 
the head. The weary waiting, the hoping against 
hope, the clinging to the straw of belief in the sea of 
improbability are pictured in the eyes and features of 
many of the callers for letters that never come. Every 
disappointment is an added pain, a new weight laid 
upon the throbbing breast. The fiimiliar faces cease 
to come at last. Where have they gone ? Perhaps 
they might be recognized at the morgue. 

But they who get letters often open ihemwith wild 
pulses and trembling fingers. D !d you ever watch 
the faces of those whos-e eyes devour letters just j'c- 
ceived? If you be a skilled physiognomi':':, you can 
learn the contents by the reflections above them. 
Tnere is wealth ; here satisfaction ; there is hope ; 



422 The Great METiioroLis. 

here despair; there is love ; here hate; there is saint- 
liiiess; here sin. What may not a letter convey? 
What potent influences, what great changes, what 
spiritual revolutions miy it not bring? Letters that 
make no outward alterations cause inward transforma- 
tions beyond imagining. The great World goes on 
with imperceptible variation ; but our world, yours and 
mine, which is all the world we care for, may be shat- 
tered any hour, and tlie fragments not worth tlie 
keeping. 

How indifferently the clerks in the office rake and 
toss and tumble and pack the thousands and thousands 
of letters away ! Every one of them has a history or a 
poem for some one, a wound or balm, a weal or Avoe, 
a rose or thorn. But they are all thrown in a heap, 
like the just and the unjust, the pure and coarse, in 
the plan of creation. They are all bound and tied to- 
gether and jested and sworn over, and carried to tlie 
station or steamer, and nobody cares. 

Still, in all that multitude and confusion and chaos of 
letters, no two are alike. Each can be distinguished 
from its fellow, as can the individuals of the crowd on 
Broadway. The observer, he who has seen life, can 
guess at their contents ; can almost find out the busi- 
ness from the love-letters; those of the wife from 
those of the mistress; can determine that this is senti- 
mental, and that practical ; this cheerful, that despond- 
ent; this sweet and that bitter; for analogies run 
through the Universe, and earnest study will enable us 
to read them. 

The s1"i*'.)ns are for the accommodation of persons 
in nil fjunrH^is of the City. They are as different in 
appearance and their habitues as the locality in which 



The Post-oFFicE. 423 

they are established. At some of the stations the let- 
ters are nearly all neat, even dainty. The people who 
call are well dressed, and have style. At others, the 
inissi\jes are addressed in coarse and sprawling hands, 
and their receivers uncultivated and common-place, if 
not vulgar. The stations are the favorites of intriguers 
of both sexes, and are frequently made rendezvous for 
interdicted communication and illicit pleasures. 

Occasionally some unsophisticated citizen complains 
of such things through the newspapers, but New- York 
cares not for them. It is too busy to attempt to regu- 
late the lives of persons to whom it is indifferent. 

Like Paris, it says, " Enjoy yourselves as you like, 
if you can do it at your own expense. Your morals 
are yours. It is quite as much as I can do to look 
after my own." 



CHAPTER XLVni. 
THE GAMINS. 

New- York is as remarkable for her gamins as Paris 
is for hers. They are more peculiar, too, and more 
varied in their order. The strange little creatures who 
flaunt their rags and make grimaces in the face of the 
Hudson, are no imitators of those who gibe at Hu- 
manity and Fortune along the Seine. They are 
entirely original. They have not even heard, the 
most of them, of their tattered brothers over the sea, 
and would wage fierce war with them, should those 
ever find their way into Broadway or Park Row. No 
doubt they would be victorious over the foreigners ; 
for our gamins have a species of savage energy and 
desperate determination, with a sturdiness and muscu- 
lar power, that would be apt to triumph where hard 
blows are given. 

Their antecedents are the opposite of favorable. 
They are almost always of foreign parentage, generally 
Celtic, sometimes German ; born in wretched tenement 
houses, their earbest memories those of drnnken nnd 
brutal y)irents, of hf^r^h treatment, of errands to the 
corner irroccT-y for liquor, of rags and filth, of poverty 
and virr'. The gentle and kindly influences that sur- 
round and mold other children are unknown to thenu 



The Gamins. 425 

They are social barbarians. They have no concep- 
tion of what " home," in its true sense, means. Beauty 
and Love are almost taken out of their lives. They 
hear no music ; they see no flowers, unless they catch 
the strain of the street-musicians, or the vision of the 
bouquet-baskets when they wander into Broadway. 

All existence to them is a struggle of squalor with 
sin, of passion and ignorance with hard materialism 
and the established order of things. Almost as soon 
as they can walk, they are thrust into the street to beg 
or steal, or contribute in some manner to their parents' 
miserable support ; though it frequently happens that 
they never know their parents, and are outcasts from 
their earliest consciousness. 

Abused and beaten by those who should be their 
natural protectors, they soon abandon their " homes," 
and seek their own fortune. Strictly speaking, they 
have neither childhood nor boyhood. They pass from 
neglected infancy, almost by a bound, to an immature 
and unnatural manhood, compelled by a sense of self- 
protection to a rugged and semi-savage independence. 
Long before their teens, they are fighting against want 
and fate, like shaggy veterans, and grappling with cir- 
cumstances that would appal men who might be their 
fathers. 

Their number can hardly be ascertained. It is 
steadily on the increase, and might to-day be counted 
by tens of hundreds. The gamin is to be seen any- 
where and everywhere, in any part of the island, at 
any hour of the day or night. There is no mistaking 
him. If you did not observe closely, you n:ight im- 
agine the little fellow who wanted to carry your valise 
at the Courtlandt street ferry, or black your boots in 



426 The Great Metropolis. 

Fulton street, or sell you tlie Evening Kews in the 
Third avenue car, the same identical urchin. He has 
much the same expression of face, much the same 
voice and manner. His clothes have the same disre- 
gard of fit or wholeness, the same fantastic tatters and 
ridiculous disproportion to his figure. 

Go where you will, you find him looking shrewdly 
from under his unkempt locks and fragmentary cap ; 
standing in his great and broken boots, which he has 
either found in an ash-heap or purchased at a second- 
hand shop in the Bowery ; proffering his services in 
some manner, if you indicate any need of them ; or 
if you don't, staring at you half-curiously, half-critically, 
and evidently seeing your every grotesque or peculiar 
point. 

Their favorite callings are boot-blacking and news- 
paper-selling, for wdiich they have an original genius. 
Often they do both, and carry parcels and valises be- 
sides ; but generally a boot-black refuses to dishonor 
his profession by any fugitive occupation, and a news- 
boy deems it undignified to embark in less exalted 
enterprises. They are very industrious up to a certain 
point ; and after they have reached that, they become 
indifferent to compensation. 

Almost every gamin begins the day with an exact 
idea of how much his requirements are, and until he 
obtains the sum needful, he is supremely energetic and 
active. His wants are few, and more likely to be 
luxuries than necessities. Tobacco, beer, the Police 
Gazette and Herald^ an oyster stew, coffee and cakes, 
a joit or gallery ticket to the Bowery or Tony Pastor's, 
include his common needs. 

Of r^onrse he has hardly a vestige of a shirt, and if 



i 



i 



The Gamins. 427 

the weather be moderate, no shoes — at least none to 
speak of — not a garment he could not leap out of, or 
which a hard wind would not blow to pieces. " But 
confound it," he thinks; "what does a boy want of 
them things ? " He can get them any time. He can 
pick them up if he is abroad early enough ; and he is 
no slu2:o:ard. 

With all his rags and carelessness of appearances, 
he is luxurious in some of his tastes. He'll buy early 
fruit when it is nearly worth its weight in silver, and 
possess flash literature whatever its price. His dinner, 
even in Chatham or Nassau street, frequently costs 
him a doUai', and he'd gladly pay two dollars for it, if 
his appetite craved more. He is generous, too, at 
times, and gives to boys just "starting in business," 
enough to "set them going." He flings coppers at 
beggars as dukes would, and buys clothes, which he 
would not buy for himself, for his companions, when 
the Winter sets in. 

One marked peculiarity of the gamin is his perse- 
verance, and a certain kind of independence. He 
solicits you sufficiently to inform you of what you 
ought to have ; and, if you reject his aid, he turns 
away from you with an air of mingled pity and con- 
tempt. He appeals to you eloquently on the subject 
of your boots ; bestows a critical and condemnatory 
glance on their unpolished condition, and offers, in a 
careless way, to "shine 'em up, boss, for five cents," 
if you seem to hesitate. Should you take him at his 
offer, he will try hard to get twice as much for his 
job, by declaring " that's a ten-cent shine," and in- 
forming you that the other boys will whip him, if he 
works below the price. 



428 The Great Metropolis. 

He doos not flatter you. He does not tell you your 
feet are small, or your boots neat, or your pantaloons 
handsome, or that you are a nice gentleman, as menials 
so often do. On the contrary, he vows your boots are 
big and dirty ; intimates that it must have been a long 
time since they were "polished up," and that you're 
not what you pretend to be, if you do not give him an 
extra five cents. 

He is quick to discover intentions. Before you 
have quite made up your mind about having your 
boots blacked, he is down on his knees, with your feet 
on his box, brushing away until the perspiration starts 
from his unwashed forehead. If he be a leading artist 
in his profession, and have an acknowledged reputa- 
tion, he will have observers and imitators among his 
companions. Several of them will group themselves 
around him, on their knees, on the sidewalk, and watch 
the process closely. They are novices, probably, and 
taking lessons. When the master boot-black has 
blown his last breath upon the leather, and struck the 
toe with his brush to signify completion, cries of "bully, 
old fel," are heard from the circle of admirers. 

If you want a good polish, you must watch the boy 
or he'll shirk his duty. He'll forget to touch the heels, 
and neglect the toes, unless he chance to be giving 
instructions to his less experienced comrades. Having 
secured you, he considers his price secured, and the 
sooner he can get the job done, the better he is 
pleased. If you complain, he'll do it faithfully, but 
give you to understand all the while, he has earned 
more than he receives. 

The newsboy is not uncommonly a graduate from 
street-begging, bundle-carrying and boot-blacking, and 



The Gamixs. 429 

usually considers himself in the front rank of his fel- 
lows. He is much more intelligent, often more un- 
scrupulous than they ; begins to have decided opinions 
and theories of life, with hopes, ambitions, expecta- 
tions. He has learned a great deal by his constant 
reading of the papers, and can astonish you by the 
variety of his information. He has acquired facility, 
if not correctness of expression, and gives council, at 
times, to those on a lower round of the ladder. 

Believing the newspaper the great educator, he is 
resolved every one shall read it. He offers induce- 
ments through his imagination, when you are averse 
to buying ; looks into your face and conjectures your 
calling or character. If you impress him as a mer- 
chant, he informs you of a sudden movement in dry 
goods, an advance in gold, a decline in imports, of 
which you have never heard. 

If you are pale or pensive or abstracted, he fancies 
you literary, and speal^s of some new poem, very new 
to you and the rest of the World, — or cries out "Seri^ 
ous illness of Carlyle," "Accident to Emerson," "Im- 
portant about Dickens." Manifesting no interest, he 
concludes you an invalid, and changes his key. Then 
you learn something about "valuable remedies for 
consumption, debility and dyspepsia," "new discovery 
in medicine," or "blessing to the sick." 

If serious and solemn and unhappy, he regards you 
as a clergyman, and " Great spread of the Gospel," 
"Noble work among the missionaries," "Revival of 
religion in the country," are the phrases he is voluble 
upon. 

Should you wear a bland and meaningless and hob 
low smile, and move your right arm as if you intended 



430 The Great Metropolis. 

to ofFor it to every passer-by, lie will clamor concern^ 
ing ''Reconstruction in the South," "inexplicable con- 
duct of the Radicals," "New movement among the 
Democracy," presuming you are a politician. 

He will probably take you in some of those verbal 
nets; and before you have glanced over the paper, 
and had an opportunity to discover his deception, he 
will have disappeared in the crowd. He does not re- 
sort to such shifts unless he has had ill success in his 
sales, or the paper is devoid of any intelligence of an 
exciting character. He is a profound believer in the 
newspapers, for they have brought him all he knows; 
and perhaps he deems any trick which will make you 
read them, beneficial in the main, even if you are dis- 
appointed in certain particulars. 

A common ground for the gamins is the old Bowery 
theater, and of late Tony Pastor's opera-house, as it is 
termed. The gamins are excessively fond of amuse- 
ments such as the Bowery furnishes — sensational dra- 
mas founded upon robbery, seduction, elopement and 
desperate encounters ; tragedies in which ranting, blue- 
fire, bloody villains and horrid murders form the chief 
features. They don't affect any thing humorous on 
the stage unless it be in the shape of burnt cork or 
comic songs. They would hiss tlie most sparkling 
comedy brilliantly performed from the boards; decide 
"Much Ado about Nothing" a bore, and Congreve's 
liveliest sallies stupid. They delight in horrors, and 
banquet upon moral monstrosities. 

Of all histrionic heroes Richard the Third, as Shaks- 
peare caricatured him, is their favorite; though if 
Gloster play his part as he ought, they'll bellow at him 
in indignation. He must writhe and roar and grimace, 



The Gamins. 431 

and strike fire with his sword, if he expects thoir 
applause. All fencing scenes they enjoy amazingly, 
and all struggles on the stage, from one side to the 
other, up and down, to spasmodic orchestra, and 
ricochetting on the principal violin are apples to their 
eye. 

They are exacting and critical, and if the perform- 
ance does not please them ; if there be any abatement 
of the murderous or sulphurous element; if the trap- 
doors fail, or the demons don't appear in crimson 
throughout, they resent the defect at once, and cry 
out against the decline of the drama. They are the 
standards for the manager; and what they approve he 
knows will be successful. They are to him what the 
professional wits were in Queen Anne's time. With- 
out them he is hopeless. But when they applaud, he 
bids defiance to Wallack's and the latest Broadway 
sensation. , 

How and where does the gamin live? is a natural 
question. He can hardly answer, for he does not fully 
know himself He is sure of the past, confident of the 
present, indifferent to the future. He exists in har- 
mony with his nature, which is unnatural enough; does 
not apologize, nor indulge in make-believe nor sham 
of any kind. He neither regrets nor repents. He is 
on the exact plane of common things; seeking for 
himself, asking no favor, plucking the very beard of 
fortune, and grinning at destiny. 

He begins very bad, and often ends worse. But 
sometimes he is developed into something higher and 
better. His very errors and sins make him wise in his 
own interest. Intelligence more than moral teaching 
shows him that honesty is policy, and rectitude advan- 



432 The Great Metropolis, 

tage. He begins with reading the Police Gazette and 
Clipper ', passes to the Ledger and Herald ^ and rises 
at last to the Tribune and Nation. 

He blackens himself with a kind of whiteness. The 
polish of his boots is gradually transferred to his man- 
ners and understanding. He finds others feel an in- 
terest in him, and that gives him an interest in himself 
Benevolent persons and societies strive to benefit him ; 
to take care of his earnings; to instruct him in the 
value of pecuniary independence. As he accumulates 
a little money he grows less reckless, and by degrees 
discovers himself somewhat conservative. He finds 
he can do good ; that he has influence, and bears res- 
ponsibility. 

The ill-fortune of his companions who have turned 
to different paths is a warning and an example. He 
perceives that beer and tobacco and dishonesty lead 
to the T©mbs and Blackwell's island, and they to Sing 
Sing and the gallows. He has a small capital before 
he is out of his teens. He changes his calling; be- 
comes a porter or mechanic; studies in his leisure 
hours, and having been tried in the fiery furnace, is 
hot likely to be scorched by common flame. At five 
and twenty he is married, and probably has a patch of 
ground he can call his own ; enters upon a new life, 
and thanks his stars that he escaped unhurt from the 
dangers of the old. 

Such information, improvement and advancement 
are rare, however. The gamin would be more than 
mortal if he could, save in exceptional cases, rise above 
his surroundings; drag his garments through the mire 
year after year, and not be soiled. Thrust upon the 
World while a child, with no sense of right or justice, 



The Gamins. 433 

remembering only a drunken father and a virago 
mother, cruelty at home and abuse in the street, is it 
not natural he should take sides with the mean, the 
vicious and the strong ? All his best influences, his 
affections, his instincts to good are crushed outj and 
he falls into the habits of the little tyrants and ruffians 
who fight their way to the hardest livelihood. 

A bar-room becomes his highest ambition ; a prize- 
fighter his hero. As he grows older, he patronizes one 
and consorts with the other. Vile habits fasten them- 
selves upon him, and the poor little wretch whom 
sympathy would have transformed, and kindness pre- 
served creeps up through poisonous atmospheres into 
a pimp or blackleg, a thief or ruffian, a burglar or a 
murderer. 

The school is too strict, the ordeal too severe. So- 
ciety casts him out. The law exacts penalty, but does 
not restrain him; and when the unfortunate gamin, 
who had never home or friends or education or coun- 
sel, commits crime and is punished, the very society 
that would not receive or help him, lifts its soft hands 
in horror, and declares with modulated utterance that 
the times are degenerate, and that the way of the 
transgressor is hard. 
28 



CHAPTER XTiTX. 
THE DEMI-MONDE. 

"Woman's chastity is so delicate a subject that not 
only all discussion of, but any allusion to it, is tabooed 
in society. The mere mention of sexual passion 
sounds the alarm for all the proprieties, and he who 
proposed to consider it in any mixed company would 
be deemed either a mad philosopher or a social 

savage. 

The relation of the sexes is the problem of the age 

more than any other that demands solution, and lies 
nearest the hearts of the present generation. Every 
one feels there is something wrong in the existing 
condition of things; but either the fear of making 
bad worse, or the unwillingness to change what law 
and custom have sanctioned, prevents any general 
attempt at reform. The evils of lewdness are wide- 
spread and monstrous ; but marriage also has its evils, 
and who will deny that a certain moral prostitution is 
sometimes common to both ? 

The only purity is in passion spiritualized by sym- 
pathy and sanctified by affection. Neither tradition 
nor ceremonies can make any relation virtuous where 
love and harmony are not ; nor can conventionality 
and prejudice prevent Nature from obeying her in- 
stincts and obtaining her rights. 



The Demi- Monde. 435 

We all deplore the effects of illicit relations ; but 
few find a voice to denounce the unchastity of discord- 
ant wedlock, which has more sins of impurity to an- 
swer for than the World dares name. The woman 
who gives herself unreservedly where love has gone 
before is stained indelibly, while she who lives a wed- 
ded leman, and wrongs and degrades herself and Na- 
ture by every fresh bestowal, walks in seeming saint- 
liness with society's approval on her unblushing brow. 

But poor woman, why should man, the author of 
your wrongs and woes, condemn you ? You are not 
immaculate, but you are angelic compared to him. If 
you are weak, it is a lovable weakness. If you are 
wicked he has taught you wickedness. You are ever 
suffering for sins that are not your own ; and he 
should remember he was placed here for your protec- 
tion, not your persecution. When you are feeble, it 
is his duty to hold you up, not drag you down. 
When you are tempted, it is his obligation to make 
you strong. When you despair, he should give you 
hope, and make the dark future kindle with the radi- 
ance of his love. 

Yet not many think, and very few act so. Men for 
the most part seem to consider woman a proper ob- 
ject of attack wherever found ; that the contest is 
equal, and victory glorious by whatever means ob- 
tained. They have even come to believe, so false 
have been their teachings, that she despises the neg- 
lecter of any opportunity to do her wrong, and only 
crowns him with love who is ungenerous enough to 
betray her. 

No wonder that woman complains that she is mis- 
understood; for men explain her mysteries by their 



436 The Great Metropolis. 

own sensuality and selfishness, and with their false 
key unlock new chambers of unhappiness in the house 
of her heart. 

The sin, man is constantly committing- against her is 
almost the only one he will not forgive. He wrongs 
her, and calls her wronging a wrong upon himself He 
demands that she shall keep what he is ever urging, 
her to part with ; and what she yields as the highest 
expression of her love he declares the evidence of her 
dishonor. 

Poor woman, I say again, how shall she distinguish 
between her friends and foes? They both treat her 
alike. They both deceive and betray her. They both 
stab her with a kiss, and desert her at last for the very 
thing for which they sought her first. 

It is estimated by those who ought to know that 
there are in New- York about ten thousand women 
who live directly and solely upon the wages of prosti- 
tution, — professional courtesans in a word, — independ 
ent of twice as many more who lead unchaste lives, 
but preserve an outside show of respectability. Like 
other evils, this is steadily increasing; the increase 
being entirely out of proportion to the growth of popu- 
lation. The War, by throwing many out of employ- 
ment, by removing their natural protectors, and in- 
creasing temptation in various ways, added largely to 
the list, and Peace has not yet caused any favorable 
reaction. 

The great majority of these unfortunates are Ameri- 
cans, and were originally residents of the country. As 
a class they are very comely, and I have heard stran- 
gers say they were among the prettiest women in New- 
York. With very rare exceptions they are uneducated, 



The Demi-Monde. 437 

and have little knowledge of the World outside of the 
narrow and vicious sphere in which they move. Their 
history is very uniform, and that of one would answer 
for that of another. Their agreeableness of person is 
their first danger without, and their knowledge of its 
existence their companion danger within. In their 
rural homes they are either seduced by men and their 
own vanity, or, with ideas and feelings above their 
station and surroundings, they come to the City for ex- 
pansion, and soon find their undoing. Many, however, 
are very pure and honest at home, and seek New- York 
for employment. Failing to obtain occupation, or los- 
ing it after a certain time, they are thrown into the 
way of temptations or necessities they cannot resist. 
Having taken the initial false step, all other steps 
downward are easy; and, before the poor creatures 
are fully aware of it, they are following a course it is 
almost impossible to retrace. 

The remorse and misery which abandoned women 
are popularly supposed to experience are much over- 
rated. They are not happy any more than saints 
would be on this planet, nor contented, for their lives 
are wholly unnatural ; but they are ignorant and in- 
sensible, and seldom have a pleasant past to compare 
with their reckless present. We all accept what we 
deem inevitable, and in some way excuse, if we do 
not justify, our own errors to ourselves. 

The unfortunate cyprian, while in good health and 
materially comfortable, considers her career an accom- 
plished fact, and lives, as all her sex do more or less, 
in the dissipation of the hour. She has a good appe- 
tite, if not what casuists style a clear conscience, good 
digestion and good capacity for sleep ; and, with such 



438 The Great Metropolis. 

physical blessings, spiritual troubles rest lightly on her. 
When sickness or adversity comes, she loses all her 
strength and cheerfulness; grows superstitious and 
desperate without the support that fatalism yields. 
Then she flies to the excitement of liquor or the ob- 
livion of suicide. The draught of brandy sinks her 
lower ; the draught of poison gives her rest. 

Prostitution like everything else, has its degrees, its 
upper, and lower, and middle class, with miscellaneous/ 
varieties. 

The highest grade is composed of women who are 
young and desirable, and prosperous so far as their 
immediate wants are concerned. They live in the 
best houses and pay the largest prices for their board ; 
are the sought rather than the seekers; air their finery 
in Broadway and the Park ; are often the mistresses of 
blacklegs and other members of the "sporting" frater- 
nity, and exercise a certain influence in the community. 
They never drink to excess, or use tobacco or obscene 
language in company. They lay some claim to taste 
as well as decency ; can frequently thrum a little on the 
piano or guitar, read and write, and talk in a stereo- 
typed way very tolerable English. They learn some- 
thing from the plays they see, and the novels they 
read, and the men of culture they often encounter and 
have relations to. They know how to appear well 
for a certain time, and are able to palm themselves 
off upon the uninitiated as fine ladies and fascinating 
vestals. 

The second class are the women who abide in infe- 
rior places ; whose life is more fluctuating than that of 
their luckier sisters ; who seek patrons when patrons 
do not seek them ; who get intoxicated occasionally ; 



The Bemi-MondEv 439 

make spectacles of themselves in the streets, and are 
carried to the station-house. They are the elaborately 
dressed women you meet on Broadway after dark, and 
whose names you see in the police news as offenders 
against the public peace. Very often they have been 
in the upper grade, but have declined to the second, 
and will in due season fall even lower. Their position 
shifts like sand, and the shadow of sudden death is al- 
ways above their head. 

The third class are those that pace the street day 
and night in search of victims, whom they debauch 
and rob if they can. They have a room or rooms in 
some Greene or Mercer street establishment, to which 
they introduce their customers, and after their reception 
go in quest of more. Such characters are arrested every 
once in a while for theft, and sent to Blackwell's 
island or the Tombs. They make no pretense of de- 
cency ; have no regard for person. They drink like 
ward politicians, and are nearly as dishonest. They 
swear like sailors, and fight like tigers when angry. 
They have usually lost their youth and beauty ; be- 
come careless of appearances, and indifferent to their 
fate. The hospital to-day ; the prison to-morrow ; the 
deadly potion or the dark river the day after. 

A fourth or fifth class might be added — the wretch- 
ed females (all the woman seems to have gone out of 
them) who haunt the Water street dance-houses and 
the dens of Cherry street. They live on mere animal 
excitements and liquid fire ; are ribald and profane, — 
the very harpies of their kind. 

The better class of courtesans pay so much per 
week to the propHetresses of the houses of ill-fame, — 
from $25 to $50 according to the accommodations — 



440 The Great Metropolis. 

and depend upon their arts or charms, or both, to de- 
fray their expenses. A certain sum they must have, 
or the hard-hearted "landlady" will seize their bag- 
gage for debt, and drive them into the street. They 
are almost always lavish and improvident, saving 
nothing in the event of sickness or adversity, and are 
therefore liable to suffer for the want of food or shel- 
ter at any time. Some mysterious Providence seems 
to watch over them, though, as over everything else, 
and enables them to live year after year without crisis 
or calamity. 

And yet they rarely live long. Who ever saw an 
aged courtesan ? They slip off the Planet mysteriously, 
or are lost in the hubbub of the World before years 
come upon them. After a certain period they are dis 
qualified from success in their vocation by reason of 
the failure of their charms. What they do then no 
one knows. Vast numbers die from disease engen- 
dered by their unnatural lives ; and suicide is as natu- 
ral to them as summer complaint to infants. 

Courtesans rarely become quite as depraved as men 
who have surrendered all regard for the World's 
opinion. They often preserve such virtues as gene- 
rosity, pity, charity, tenderness, and devotion, to their 
dying day. Even their outlawry and the brand of in- 
famy society has fixed upon them do not drive the 
woman wholly out of their being. In emergencies 
they show beautiful traits of character and noble 
qualities which would reflect honor upon the noblest 
ladies of the land. They prove that a woman may 
have almost every virtue but one, as their more fortu- 
nate sisters sometimes do that* a wDman may possess 
no virtue but one. 



The Demi-Monde. 441 

What is most remarkable in courtesans of every 
grade is their inextinguishable affection for some one 
of the opposite sex. However unworthy, however mean, 
selfish, and brutal the man, they will fix their best love 
upon him ; make sacrifices for him ; give him worship ; 
/pleave to him through all wrong-doing and adversity. 

A thousand times deceived, they trust the thousand- 
and-first time still. Their hearts trampled upon like 
dust, their souls wrung to agony, they yet have power 
to love and idealize the object of their love. They 
reveal that woman's whole instinct is to loyalty, to one 
affection, to one absorbing devotion ; that her natural 
disposition is to purity; and that, broken and ruined 
as the fair temple may be, there is an inner and a se- 
cret fane on which the word Woman is graven with 
the point of a diamond in letters of gold. 



CHAPTER L. 
THE CLUBS. 

New-York has more clubs than all the other cities 
of the Union combined. Their number is steadily in- 
creasing, and is likely, before many years, to be as 
large as that of Paris or London. 

Clubs are the late fruit of a high civilization — the 
outgrowth of leisure, luxury and cultivated unrestraint. 
In new and small towns they are impossible. In old 
and large cities they are needful, because they answer 
to a positive want in an excessively conventional and 
surfeited community. They have their origin in cer- 
tain superfluity of means, and a kind of inverted sat- 
isfaction. They are anti-matrimonial and anti-domestic, 
and present the paradox of a longing for society and 
a tendency to isolation. 

Every club is a blow against marriage, a protest 
against domesticity ; offering, as it does, the surround- 
ings and comforts of a home without women or the 
ties of family. Clubs increase in an inverse ratio with 
matrimony, and each new member is an encourage- 
ment to celibacy. 

There must be more than a hundred regular organ- 
ized clubs of all kinds here, though comparatively few 
of them are well known, and have expensive and lux- 
urious establishments in which to keep up their state. 



The Clubs. 443 

The Metropolis has boat clubs, cricket clubs, chess 
clubs, yacht clubs, ball clubs, billiard clubs, press clubs, 
as well as art, literary, and merely social clubs. In 
fact, almost every game, and pleasure, and circle of 
artists and literary men, has its nucleus and focus in 
the form of a club, and club life of some sort is grow- 
ing more and more in favor and fashion. 

The social clubs are, however, the fashionable and 
famous ones, because of the wealth and character of 
their members, and the luxury and elegance of the 
mansions they occupy. The best known and most 
pretentious of these are the Century club. No. 109 
East Fifteenth street ; Union League club, corner 
Madison avenue and Twenty-sixth street ; New- York 
club. No. 2 East Fifteenth street ; Union club, corner 
Twenty-first street and Fifth avenue ; Manhattan club, 
corner Fifteenth street and Fifth avenue ; Travelers^ 
club. No. 222 Fifth Avenue; Eclectic club, corner 
Twenty-sixth street and Fifth Avenue ; City club, No. 
31 East Seventeenth street; the Harmonic club, Forty- 
second street, near Fifth Avenue; Allemania, No. 18 
East Sixteenth street; American Jockey club; Olympic 
club, No. 16 Union Place; and New- York Yacht club, 
club house at Hoboken. The Athenaeum club was 
long a favorite club, but dissolved some months ago. 

These clubs, as will be observed, are in the most 
fashionable quarter, and the houses they occupy are 
among the handsomest and costliest in the City. Many 
of them were private dwellings, but required little 
alteration for the new purpose to which they were 
converted. The rent of the club-houses is from $8,000 
to $20,000 a year; they are furnished in the richest 
and most elegant manner, and kept up in princely 



444 The Great Metropolis. 

style. The initiation fee and annual dues vary from 
$50 to $150 for the former, and $50 to $100 for the 
latter. 

The club-houses are little more than hotels on the 
European plan, where one pays for what he gets. The 
members have no rooms, but often take their meals at 
the club; while others attend the regular meetings 
only, and pay their regular dues. Others, again, do 
not go there once a year. 

The members vary from 300 to 800, half of whom 
are usually absentees in one form or other. They in- 
clude almost every class. Merchants, clergymen, law- 
yers, physicians, authors, journalists, artists, bankers 
are eligible, and may be elected if formally proposed 
and regularly balloted for. 

In most of the clubs, one negative vote in ten is 
sufficient for a "blackball" or defeat of the candidate, 
so that it is well for persons of delicate pride and sen- 
sibility to learn beforehand, through friends who are 
members, what will be their chances of election. 

In the London clubs, lodgings are furnished to those 
who desire them ; but the Union League is the only 
club here where members can have rooms for the 
night. Other club-houses will soon imitate the Union 
League, it is thought, and the Metropolis of America 
will become in that respect like the metropolis of Great 
Britain. The charge for meals is high, usually ; but 
they are excellently served, and dining at one's club 
is quite the mode. The ordinary expense of belong- 
ing to a club is light, as the privileges of the house in 
no instance cost more than $100 a year. 

The Century club, originally a sketch club, is the 
oldest here, having been established fully thirty years 



The Clubs. 445 

ago. It is considered the most aristocratic and exclu- 
sive in the City, and the most difficult, therefore, of 
entree. Many months of notification of desire to be- 
come a member must be given, that the character and 
claims of the candidate may be duly and fully consid- 
ered. Designed originally for a strictly literary and 
artistic association, it has departed from its first inten- 
tion, and is now open to any gentleman — any one so 
regarded, at least — whom the members may approve. 

William Cullen Bryant is president, and A. R. Mac- 
donough secretary. Among its members are Bierstadt, 
McEntee, Gilford, Gignoux and Cropsey, the artists; 
Bayard Taylor, George Wm. Curtis, Parke Goodwin 
and William Allen Butler, litterateurs ' Rev. Dr. Bel- 
lows and Dr. Osgood, clergymen ; Edwin Booth and 
Lester Wallack, actors ; John Jacob Astor, Alexander 
T. Stewart and August Belmont, millionaires. Many 
other of the prominent merchants, artists and authors 
belong to the Century, which has the reputation of 
having "blackballed" more candidates than all the 
other clubs in town. 

The Union League and Manhattan are political clubs 
— the former republican and the latter democratic — 
the most prominent members or* the two parties be- 
longing to the social organizations. Augustus Schell 
is president, and Manton Marble secretary of the Man- 
hattan ; of the Union League, John Jay is president, 
and J. L. Ward secretary. 

The Manhattan was begun in opposition to the Union 
League. John Van Buren and Dean Richmond were 
leading members of the Manhattan ; and August Bel- 
mont, Fernando Wood, Manton Marble of the Wo7-Id, 
Erastus and James Brooks of the Express^ and John 



446 The Great METROPOLia 

T. Hoffman are at present active members. Horace 
Greeley, Wm. E. Dodge, Charles A. Dana, Marshall 
0. Roberts, and other well known politicians and jour- 
nalists are among the Union Leaguers. Programmes 
and platforms are arranged in these clubs, and the 
course of either party has been time and again dictated 
from Madison and Fifth avenue. 

The Travelers', W. B. Duncan, president, F. W. J. 
Hurst, treasurer, was primarily intended for the encour- 
agement and entertainment of distinguished travelers, 
and Bayard Taylor, George William Curtis, and Her- 
man Melville, and other wandering New-Yorkers, are 
honorary members. Most foreigners who have seen 
the World are invited there on their arrival in the 
City, and frequently lecture before the club. The 
Travelers', however, like most of the clubs, has tended 
more and more to a social form, and is now little else 
than a mere social organization. 

The Athenaeum was one of the oldest and most 
popular of the City clubs. Literature and art gave it 
its rise, and membership was at first confined to per- 
sons of those guilds. After two or three years' exist- 
ence, it was deemed wise to include men of other 
callings; and it was placed on a footing with the rest. 
More journalists belonged to the Athenseum than to 
any other club; and its quarterly receptions, when 
several hundred guests were invited, were very pleas- 
ant occasions. The evenings were spent convivially 
and conversationally, and as clever a set of fellows, 
both in the European and American sense, were there 
brought together, as can be found anywhere in Man- 
hattan. Mismanagement and reckless extravagance 
brought the popular club to an untimely end. 



The Clubs. 447 

The New-York, H. H, Ward, president, J. F. Rug- 
gles, secretary; Union, Moses H. Grinnell, president, 
J. Grenville Kane, secretary; City, C. L. Tiffany, pres- 
ident, S. Crocker, secretary, and Eclectic clubs, Henry 
J. Scudder, president, A. G. Montgomery, Jr., secretary, 
are entirely private and social ; and membership is 
mainly confined to men of fortune, who live on their 
incomes, and are not engaged in active pursuits of any 
kind. The New- York, Union and Eclectic have 
splendid club-houses, and everything in and about 
them is in the most expensive style. Few, if any, 
persons known to fame belong to those organizations, 
which hold wealth and fashion above character and 
culture. 

The members figure conspicuously in the Park drives 
and in Fifth avenue Germans, at Saratoga-hops and 
morning service in Grace Church, at the Academy and 
late Delmonico suppers. They wear the sleekest of 
silk hats, the shortest of sack-coats, the most elegant 
of pantaloons, and the daintiest of gloves that are visi- 
ble of an afternoon promenade in Broadway. 

They lounge their lives away luxuriously, if not 
profitably, and have clerical falsehoods drawled over 
their silver-mounted cofl&ns before they are deposited 
in family vaults at Greenwood and fashionably for- 
gotten. 

The American Jockey Club, August Belmont presi- 
dent, John B. Irving secretary, were to occupy the 
handsome club house of the Union League, but aban- 
doned their intent when it was completed. The mem- 
bers have a pleasant house near the Jerome Park, 
Fordham, where they often go; but they have no par- 
ticular place of rendezvous in town. 



448 The Great Metropolis. 

The Harmonie, M. Siegman president, Leopold Calm 
secretary, is a Hebrew club. The members are wealthy, 
and have a fine house most elegantly furnished. The 
Allemania is a German club composed mainly of im- 
porters and retired merchants. The Yacht club, 11. 
G. Stebbins commodore, Hamilton Morton secretary, 
exhibits itself upon the water more than upon land, 
and is famous for its fine marine performances. 

The Herald has a club composed of members who 
are or have been connected with the paper, and meet 
at a dinner once a year. The Tribune has or had a 
club which included a number of literary men and 
women of distinction, — among them Horace Greeley, 
George William Curtis, Bayard Taylor, George Ripley, 
Edmund Clarence Stedman, Alice and Phoebe Carey, 
Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, Kate Field, and others. It has 
not met for a long while, and is in a sleep so profound 
as to be an excellent counterfeit of death. 

The Press club formed a year ago will flourish, it is 
to be hoped, though no one can determine if the repre- 
sentatives of the different dailies will co-operate with 
each other in perpetuating such an organization. 

The New- York journalists are often very narrow and 
envious. They are lacking in esprit de corps and gen- 
erosity of feeling for each other. The smallest jealous- 
ies characterize many of the order of Metropolitan 
scribes, so much so that all attempts thus far to create 
a catholic and fraternal feeling among them have been 
signal failures. 

A new bachelors' club, it is said, has recently been 
formed in the City, and the members, already number- 
ing several hundreds, have rented a handsome house in 
Lexington avenue. Celibacy is required for eligibility. 



The Clubs. 449 

and no one is admitted who is not 25 years old. The 
members, so reports run, are young men of good fam- 
ily, and fashionable, for the most part, and have en- 
tered the organization more to protest against wedlock 
than from any inadequacy of means to support wives. 
Some of them have incomes of $20,000 to $40,000; 
and that sum, with care and economy, will provide, in 
Manhattan, for a woman who has no social ambition 
and no fondness for parade. They are not bachelors, 
I fear, in any true sense ; but they have elected to live 
with the moral freedom which marks Paris and the 
continental cities generally. Bachelorhood is apt to 
be pleasant to men mitil fifty, at least ; but, after that, 
they lose much of their passion for adventure ; women 
grow less fond of them ; their days of sentimental ex- 
periences are on the wane; they wax conservative, 
and begin to want some feminine creature who wildly 
worships them, and longs to be enslaved by her own 
affections. The instinct of tyrant man asserts itself, 
and it is usually obeyed. 

Quite a passion seems to have manifested itself in 
the City for feminine organizations, — more than half a 
dozen having been formed, if rumors may be believed, 
within as many months. From every one of them men 
are rigorously excluded; and, it is said, this is a kind 
of womanly revenge for the establishment of wholly 
masculine clubs. An effort has been made in the pet- 
ticoat fraternities, by some of the sentimental members, 
to admit the lords of creation ; but the sterner sisters 
have frowned down the incipient weakness, — declaring 
that the life of their peculiar organizations depended 
upon rigid adherence to the rule. 

The proceedings of the feminine clubs are kept as 
29 ^ 



450 The Grzat Metropolis. 

secret as they can be, considering the nature of their 
composition. From floating gossip, I have learned 
something of their character. 

The Sorosis, or Blue Stocking Club, as it has been 
called, is composed chiefly of literary women and femi- 
nine artists. It was formed last Spring, and has been 
the subject of interminable comment in the City, and par- 
ticularly in the country press. Some of its members 
are Alice and Phoebe Carey, Kate Field, Lucia Gilbert 
Calhoun, Octavia Walton Levert, Mary E. Dodge, Sarah 
F. Ames, Jennie C. Croley, and Mary Clemmer Ames. 
The Sorosis has no special purpose beyond enjoyment 
and the formation of a nucleus for women of liberal 
mind and cultivated taste. The members meet every 
month at a luncheon at the upper Delmonico's, and 
have a pleasant time. They have once accepted the 
invitation of the Press Club, between which and their 
own there seems a strong bond of afiinity. They are 
agreeable and accomplished women, and their unpre- 
tending organization is deserving of commendation. 

Another one of the clubs consists of women who are 
spiritualists, but don't want to be known as such. 
Many of them are mediums; but, fearful of ridicule, 
they meet in strict privacy. They claim that the spirits 
of their friends and of distinguished persons communi- 
cate more freely with women, fully in sympathy with 
the supersensual doctrines, than they would if men, 
naturally hard and skeptical, were present. Not a few 
of the spiritual sisters belong to fashionable society, 
and some of them are known in literature. All of 
them assume to have advanced much higher, and to 
have more thorough acquaintance with aflairs in the 
other world, than any of the common spiritualists. 



The Clubs. 451 

Their seances are said to be very interesting. They 
who attend them are reported to "take on" alarm- 
ingly at times, — talking, laughing, and weeping with 
the dear departed as they would were the spirits in the 
flesh. 

Still another club is composed of woman's rights 
women who seek to avoid publicity. They are not so 
ultra as the Cady and Anthony school, having no de- 
sire to vote; but they demand the same rights in pro- 
perty, society, and morals, that men have. The ma- 
jority of them are married, and confide to one another 
the secrets of their households. Their woes are re- 
lieved by sympathy, and they find much comfort, as 
women always do, in pouring out their inner lives to 
each other. They give counsel to one another, and 
they believe they receive vast benefit from the associa- 
tion. The married say, too, that the perfect freedom 
they have in the club renders them more loyal and 
secure. The organization prevents them from tempta- 
tion, and from confiding in some man beside their hus- 
band, which they are right in considering the first and 
most perilous step a wife can take. 

A fourth club is made up of young women, belong- 
ing to the same "set," who have banded together for 
the purpose of making eligible matches, and to find 
out whether the men who pay them marked attention 
are really in love with them. By such means, they 
are apt to detect deceivers and mere flirts, many of 
whom are said to have been surprised at the sudden 
repulses received from girls they had fancied despe- 
rately enamored. 

Emma informs Mary what Charles has said; and 
Bessie tells Nellie what Augustus has vowed by the 



452 The Great Metropolis. 

light of her eyes. So, when Charles or Augustus 
comes to repeat his gallant speeches to a second or 
third fair one, he is confounded by the revelation of 
his own perfidy. 

No one can doubt this is an excellent society, and 
ought to be styled the '' Unwedded Woman's Heart- 
protecting Association." 

A fifth club is composed of maids, wives and wid- 
ows, who meet at such times as a committee may ap- 
point. Their object is, I understand, merely to have 
a " good time ; " and they have one with chatting, 
music, wine, and the discussion of the virtues and vices 
of their masculine intimates. I should suppose that 
would be the most entertaining of any of the clubs, 
and that any Peeping Tom might be paid for his curi- 
osity. I hear the applications for membership to that 
society are much more numerous than to any other. 
Women are such ardent lovers and pursuers of pleas- 
ure that a '^good time," with them, must mean some- 
thing. I opine a fit motto for them would be Pope's 
familiar couplet : 

Some men to pleasure, some to business take ; 
But every woman is at heart a rake. 

The sixth class is composed of actresses of an in- 
ferior grade, including a number of ballet-girls, and 
very much resembles a benevolent society. The mem- 
bers pay so much into the treasury every month ; and 
when any one of them is out of a situation, she is 
assisted to obtain a new one, or receives a certain sum 
for her support. Several of the leading actresses have 
solicited the privilege of becoming honorary mem- 
bers, and have been very liberal in their donations. 
Every theater in the City is represented; and the 
Dramatic club may do much good. 



The Clubs. 453 

The seventli club consists of the class known as 
"unfortunate women." They seem to recognize pros- 
titution as unavoidable in the present condition of 
society. They make no effort toward reform, but aim 
to help with money those who are sick, indigent or 
aged. They say they have befriended a great many 
of their fallen sisters, having, in numerous instances, 
preserved them from self-destruction. Singular and 
one sided as this charity is, it is far better than none, 
and may lead to means of prevention among the most 
wretched class of beings over whom the heavens 
bend. 

Club-life is not materially different from life at the 
Brevoort, or Hoffman, or St. James', except that it is 
more private and exclusive, and passed outside of the 
society of women, who are not admitted to the club- 
house in any other capacity than as domestics. 

Women are inclined to say, if not to think, that 
clubs are the dullest and dreariest places in creation, 
because they are excluded from them. But candor 
compels me to say, although I do not wish to violate 
the sanctity of the confessional, that club-houses are 
quite as pleasant as many houses which pretend to 
include paradise within their limits. They are quiet, 
well ordered, properly managed, and bountifully sup- 
plied ; and what more could a reasonable man ask ? 

The members lounge, read, smoke, talk^ play billiards, 
card5 and chess. They have the leading papers and 
magazines, domestic and foreign ; and, on tlie whole, 
enjoy themselves very tolerably. Some of the mem- 
bers are at the club twelve or fourteen hours out of 
the twenty-four, while others do not go there once a 
week. There are as many married as single members, 



454 The Great Metropolis. 

and the former are often the most regular frequenters; 
while those who have pleasant homes and affectionate 
wives are rare visitors. When a home is happy, the 
club loses much of its attractiveness. 

1 fancy a feminine reader interjecting something 
about woman's bright smiles and sweet sympathy, the 
prattle of little children, and the music of their tiny 
feet. That is a very pleasant picture ; but it has its 
disagreeable reverse. 

Women weep as well as smile, and indulge in tan- 
trums as well as sympathies ; and children's lungs and 
limbs are not always exercised as poetry and parents 
would have them. So men without any particular 
inclination to domesticity, live very calmly and con- 
tentedly at clubs. 

" What do you men do ? How do you amuse your- 
selves without us ? " asks Ida, the inquisitive, of a club 
member. 

And he answers : 

'' We do well enough. We find amusement, interest, 
instruction— call it what you may— looking at life 
through the windows; in reading, smoking, dining 
with a few agreeable fellows ; hearing the gossip of 
Society, without making part of it ; lounging the days 
and nights away serenely, undisturbed by flirtations, 
and unhaunted by visions of sentimental scenes that 
may be postponed, but cannot be avoided." 

'' But what do the husbands and fathers mean by 
staying away from their wives and children in that 
manner ? " 

'• It has been so long since I was a Benedick and a 
paterfamilies that I cannot remember. But I presume 
the charming family gets along quite as comfortably 



The Clubs. 455 

without the member of the club as he without them ; 
and I am bound to say he seems beyond the need of 
consolation as he watches his smoke-wreaths with a 
merry twinkle in his eye, and with a certain air of 
indulging in an interdicted and, therefore, delicious 
pleasure." 

'•But I think it is abominable for men to act that 
way ; and I wouldn't marry a man who belonged to a 
club," declares Inez with temper, which she considers 
the sweet sympathy of the sex. 

A cynic replies : 

"Adhere to that, my dear child, and the membership 
of clubs will increase accordingly." 

" Now you are hateful. That's the effect of belong- 
ing to a club. I guess many of the members of your 
club would be only too glad to have me for a wife." 

Perhaps they would. There are a good many muffs 
in the concern." 

"Now, I 1 " 

" By Jove ! I've raised a scene," continues the cynic; 
the woman's weeping. What shall I do ? While the 
tears flow I'll light my cigar, and think whether I had 
better kiss the pretty simpleton or run away." 



CHAPTER LI. 
THE BEGGARS 

The common remark of foreigners visiting the United 
States that there are so few beggars in this country, 
will soon cease to be true if all the American cities de- 
velop public mendicancy like New-York. 

The Metropolis, I suspect, has as many professional 
beggars as all the other cities of the Republic combined, 
and the number seems steadily and rapidly increasing. 
With very rare exceptions, however, the eleemosynary 
tribe is composed of foreigners, who, devoid both of 
the pride and energy of the Americans, take to the 
pitiable calling very kindly, even if they have not fol- 
lowed it before leaving home. 

The number of beggars varies here with years, sea- 
sons and business. When times are dull, the tribe in- 
creases, and when they are active it increases also, for 
then more strangers are in town and the field of ope- 
rations is larger. In the Spring and Summer it is more 
convenient and comfortable to be abroad, and the warm, 
sunshine acts upon mendicants as it docs upon flowers 
and women, — bringing them out in profusion. During 
a period of commercial depression, alms-seekers aug- 
ment perceptibly, many of them, no doubt, being 
forced to solicit charity by stern necessity, and others 
expecting to profit by the sympathy created through 



The Beggars. 



457 



tlio Press in behalf of the suffering poor. Each year, 
however, owing to the vast immigration and the ten- 
dency of foreigners to settle in cities, the list of beg- 
gars swells. Twenty years ago beggars were compara- 
tively rare, and even ten years since, there was hardly 
one wdiere five may be counted now. 

The number of professional mendicants in New-York 
is estimated at five or six thousand, with several thou- 
sand amateurs and persons of both sexes who embrace 
the vocation when the harvest promises an abundant 
yield. 

The varieties for the most part are four — cripples 

and the sick, children, 
impostors, and pretend- 
ers — the third class 




being the 



largest and 



most characteristic, in- 
uding many of the 
most curious specimens, 
• and requiring ability 
t and enterprise above 
!the others. 

The notorious beggars 
STREET BEGGAB. of Ncw-York, who had 

become familiar to the public through a series of years, 
have disappeared since the War — at least most of them. 
The half dozen old blind men who were seen in Broad- 
way every fair day as regularly as Trinity clock sound- 
ed, the ancient hag in the vicinity of Fulton ferry, the 
armless Frenchman near Hanover square, the hideous 
humpback in Canal street, the shriveled witch and leg- 
less skeleton in the Bowery, have retired either from 
life or business. The Mackerelville dwarf, the nose- 



458 The Great Metropolis. 

less Pole, the crippled Italian who pretended to have 
fought through all the Napoleonic wars, the wooden- 
limbed sailor who sang ballads in Water street and 
swore roundly that he was with Perry on the lakes, 
and even the gray-haired fury that frightened the 
frowsy children in the Sixth ward, have stepped into 
the poor-house or the grave. 

But another order of beggars is waxing visible, — 
beggars of larger scope and higher aspirations, more 
ambitious and enterprising, more daring, original and 
fruitful of resources, more reflective of the country and 
the time. Every ship that reaches Castle Garden is 
importing them, and the day may not be remote when 
we shall rival London in hordes of alms-seekers. 

Of all the cities of the world. New York is the best 
for beggars to thrive in ; for Americans are more care- 
less of money and more charitable than any people 
under the sun, and Gotham gives, unquestioning, with 
open hand. 

The fame of Manhattan has doubtless gone abroad, 
and every nation will send her beggars to us in in- 
creased numbers. They are unpleasant additions ; but 
there is room for them all, and credulity and alms for 
every mother's son and daughter who makes a wry 
face, and puts forth an empty hand. 

As it is, beggars penetrate every quarter and corner 
of the town. You dare not leave your front door open, 
lest they enter your library or private chamber with a 
face that would curdle milk. They steal into every 
hotel drawing-room, in spite of porters and servants, 
and show you their lacerated forms. They come be- 
tween you and your friends in Broadway whom you 
have not seen since boyhood, and thrust their sickening 



The Beggars. 459 

rags into your very face. They are under your feet 
while you listen to the sentimental confidences of Dora 
or Drusalinda, and pluck your gloved hand from Al- 
thea's graceful arm as you offer to assist her to her 
carriage in Irving place. 

The first class meet with the quickest sympathy 
and receive the readiest assistance ; for no man 
of feeling can see a blind, or maimed or diseased 
person without a touch of pity and a prompting to 
charity. Eveiybody knows there is ample provision 
in the public institutions for such, and that they Avould 
be a great deal better off there than exposing them- 
selves to sun and storm, to painful attitudes and ex- 
cruciating grimaces, for artistic and pecuniary effect 
But, to the credit of humanity be it said, our pity for 
suffering and our desire to relieve it are so great we 
can hardly help giving a trifle on principle ; though it 
often happens that, for the sake of freeing ourselves 
from annoyance or the contemplation of pain, we 
bestow unwilling alms. 

The sick and crippled are attended, of course, by 
some one who does the talking and describes the woe. 
And this companion of misfortune is either a relative 
of the afflicted or an employe who receives a propor- 
tion of the receipts for his services. 

The most unpleasant thing connected with this class 
is, that the cripple or his agent insists upon proving 
to you ocularly that there is no deceit or imposition in 
the case. To that end, shriveled limbs, unsightly 
stumps, ghastly wounds, and festering sores are re- 
vealed before you can take your money from your 
purse or get out of sight. When you are on your way 
to dinner, or to visit your beloved, or have composed 
in your mind the last stanza of the new poem that has 



460 The Great Metropolis. 

given you such trouble, it is not agreeable to be con- 
fronted by some loathsome vision. You would have 
paid liberally to have been saved such an exhibition, 
and do pay promptly to be favored with as little of it 
as possible. 

Beyond question, this revelation of hideousness is a 
trick of the trade ; the wretched mendicants know 
that sensibility will convert itself into charity rather 
than be shocked. They have discovered that prepa- 
rations for exhibition have a quickening effect on 
purse-strings and a certain carelessness respecting 
change. I have more than once observed grim smiles 
of satisfaction on pallid and repulsive faces when such 
words as ^'Here's something; for Heaven's sake don't 
show it to me!" have reached their ears. 

Begging one would suppose the hardest of lives, 
particularly for the halt or the invalid, and yet, such 
is the singularity of temperament, persons without 
health, or strength, or perfect limbs, will endure day 
after day what no one of vigorous constitution would 
for the income of Astor or Stewart. How they live 
through it all is beyond solution. But they do, and 
apparently are not harmed by it. Year after year 
they sit in the broiling sun, or under the descending 
storm, with a sublime patience worthy the admiration 
of the gods. Begging is their destiny, and they seem 
so superior to the laws governing the rest of mankind 
that I am convinced beggars are the only immortals. 

The second class are usually the healthiest and cheer- 
fulest children in the City. They are rosy, but dirty ; 
robust but ragged ; and enjoy begging as they do 
sweetmeats. Many of them are sent by their parents 
into the streets to ply their vocation, but more are en- 



The Beggars. 461 

gaged in it on their own account. They are generally 
amusing, and some of their efforts at deception are 
very droll. They are too young and natural to be ar- 
tistic, and consequently they blunder not a little. 

As you come round the corner of Fourteenth street 
from Broadway you see several of them playing and 
laughing merrily ; but the moment they espy you they 
go apart, assume a most woe-begone expression of 
countenance, advance to you with outstretched hands, 
muttering, "Please help a poor boy whose father's 
dead and mother's twelve small children," — all in one 
word. They follow you the length of half the block 
sometimes if they see a penny in your eye, reluctant 
to surrender hope. But if you go on without regard- 
ing them, they turn away, and laugh and play again 
until the next stranger appears. 

The juvenile vagabonds are frequently beaten at 
night by their unnatural parents if they bring home no 
money. But the children so soon learn to cheat and 
lie, and steal, as to prevent such punishment. If they 
have one good day, they save over a part of their re- 
ceipts for a bad one. If they get too little they steal 
something and sell it. And, after a certain amount of 
experience, learning their own efficiency, they run 
away from their parents and set up for themselves, 
until they find their way to the Tombs or Blackwell's 
island. 

Not a few of the children are pale and haggard, and 
sad-eyed, reminding you of Smike, Oliver Twist, or 
Little Nell, with the promise of better things in them. 
With education and training, they would be intelligent 
and worthy men and women. Their little eyes look 
appealingly at you, and mayhap you try to do some- 



462 The Great Metropolis. 

thing for them. But, unless you take them from their 
surroundings, they become necessarily corrupt, and sink 
below the reach of reform. Poisoned air and poisoned 
example are too potent, and they graduate at last 
into barkeepers, and burglars, and ward-politicians. 

The impostors might be termed the intellectual class, 
for they require invention, expedients, originality and 
tact. They, more than any of the others, are born to 
their calling, and are artists after a certain fashion. 
Like their fellows they pay a very high price for the 
smallest success ; but they enter into and prosecute 
their profession with enthusiasm, and rejoice over the 
cleverness with which they cheat the public. They 
have much of the dramatic element in them, playing 
parts often more skillfully than the actors in Broad- 
way. 

They represent blind men one day, cripples the next, 
wounded soldiers the third, robbed immigrants the 
fourth, southern Union refugees the fifth, discharged 
laborers the sixth, and victims of a railway accident 
the seventh. They make up admirably ; hide one eye, 
conceal an arm or leg, create a cicatrice, simulate a 
sore, counterfeit an agony, imitate a grief, in a man- 
ner that would yield them histrionic laurels. , 

They are jolly fellows in their way. They usually 
spend freely at night what they have earned by day. 
They drink, gamble, lay wagers on dog and cock 
fights, and are splendidly improvident, on a small 
scale; for have they not genius that can be converted 
into postal currency or national banknotes at twenty- 
four hours notice ? 

A large portion of these are the men. and women 
who have led similar lives in Europe, and who have 



The Beggars. 4G3 

come to America induced by the accounts they have 
heard of its excellence as a field for their peculiar tal- 
ents. They are the borrowers of children and 
babies, the offerers of certificates of worthiness, of dis- 
charge papers from the army, of letters of recommen- 
dation from "well-known citizens"; and every other 
conceivable fraud of person, manner and document. 
They probably get more money than any other class, 
as is natural enough, for properly directed and intelli- 
gent effort always has an advantage over desultory la- 
bors. 

In spite of their disguise, they stand in a little awe 
of New-Yorkers, and prefer to practice their arts on 
strangers and people from the country, being much 
surer of appreciation and recognition from that quarter. 
Like most persons of originality and individuality, they 
have strange episodes and crises in their lives, and 
usually die dramatically by knife or revolver, delirium 
tremens or suicide. They hate quiet existences, as 
Harry Percy did, and, like the fiery Scot, have a pen- 
chant for breathing their last with their boots on. 

The fourth class are they who make an assumption 
of giving an equivalent for charity. They carry about 
or have with them detestable cigars that would not 
have smoked in the great New-York fire, cheap bal- 
lads, papers of pointless pins, withered bouquets, un- 
readable books, and the like, accompanied with mum- 
bled utterances concerning extreme poverty or pe- 
culiar misfortune. Often they have dyspeptic bag- 
pipes, or broken fiddles, or consumptive accordeons, 
which any persdn of sound hearing is willing to pay to 
stop. As no one ever takes any of their merchandise, 
their stock, however small, will last for a season. 



4G4 The Great Metropolis. 

This class congregates mostly about the City Hall 
park, where last year an irrepressible fiddler, who 
never knew a note, was paid a certain sum by the 
newspapers to go elsewhere, and where a veteran bag- 
piper is now receiving proposals to the same effect. 
The pretenders also infest Broadway as far as Union 
Square, and show an unwelcome fondness for Four- 
teenth street, Fifth, Lexington and Madison avenues. 

Oh well, let them obey their instincts. They are 
human, though unfortunate. They are annoying and 
irritating, but they have a hard lot, and perhaps de- 
serve more than they get for their trouble in asking. 
Ninety-nine out of every hundred are impostors or 
professionals ; but the one before you may be the ex- 
ception and really suffering. What you give will not 
harm you, and may serve him much. It is better to 
be deceived all your life than once to withhold from 
the truly needy. 

When you have come to such conclusion, and act 
upon it, you will probably find by the first experiment 
that you have been deceived. 

The other day an old woman, having a few apples 
and a little candy to sell, was set upon in Broadway 
by a drunken sailor who knocked her down and hurled 
her humble wares into the gutter. The rufiian got 
away; but the crowd pitying her, made up a little 
purse for her. A curious reporter followed her to the 
Bowery ; and there the scene was re-enacted exactly 
and completely. It was repeated a third and fourth 
time, and the performance was always creditably given. 
The fellow who played the drunken sailor was the 
woman's husband, and the two made money by their 
original performance. 



The Beggars. 



465 



The fortunes of mendicants are usually tlie creations 
of journalists and letter- writers. Few beggars die with 
any considerable sums of money, for they either squan- 
der it, even after long hoarding, or it is stolen by their 
own class. They adhere, most of them, with a strange 
perseverance and perversity, to their calling. Beg- 
ging must have a species of infatuation, like burgla- 
ry, war, the stage, and journalism. The New- York 
mendicants usually live in noisome cellars and gar- 
rets, in the Fourth, Sixth and Eighteenth wards ; 
live in a wretched manner, that Crabbe would have 
delighted to describe ; live away from sunlight and 
pure air; live worse than the swine until all the 
sweetness of nature is crowded out of their ill-condi- 
tioned souls, and they find the only peace possible to 
them in the grave, most charitable of all alms-givera 
to the wretched and forsaken. 




MACKEREL VILLE TURN-OUT. 



30 



CHAPTER LII. 
STREET-RAILWAYS. 

New- York is much better shaped for a cucumber 
than a city. It is so long and slender that people who 
abide here pass a large part of their lives in getting 
up and down town. Take the hours in which they 
are so engaged out of their existence, and they would 
not know what to do with themselves. Such a change 
would be like extending their day to forty-eight hours. 
But getting up and down town, like everything else, 
has its uses. It helps to kill time, (why shouldn't we 
kill, when we can, what kills all of us at last?) and 
that was one of the original purposes of the Metropolis. 
In that. New- York has been a complete success. A 
man, and of necessity a woman, can employ more hours 
here with less profit, than in any city of the World, 
Paris perhaps excepted. It is always noon in New- 
York, and before you think of the hour again it is 
midnight. So one can get through with his life very 
readily while wondering how he has wasted it. 

To prevent Gothamites from being surprised at their 
own funerals while going to and from business, with 
the unimportant consideration of making large fortunes 
by swindling and incommoding the public, street rail- 
ways were established. They were, doubtless, designed 
by Providence to show mortals the wickedness of hu- 



Street-Railways. 467 

mau ways, and to plant thorns amid the roses of their 
pleasure. But for the railways man might long to 
linger forever in Manhattan. Compelled to patronize 
them, however, day after day, he sees this World is 
hollow, and aspires to another where the railways are 
not. Thus (it is the Pantheistic belief that partial evil 
is universal good) the railways have theologic virtues 
and enforce upon the human family the benison of 
wretchedness after the most approved orthodox fash- 
ion. 

What sybarites and epicureans might we not become^ 
without the trials and sufferings resulting from the 
railways! Through them literally and metaphorically 
the iron enters the soul. Beauty and bouquets, love 
and happiness may await us up town. But remem- 
brance of the means of getting there spiritualizes the 
senses, abates all transports of the blood. It is the 
skeleton at the feast, the hair shirt against the bound- 
ing heart, the sword of Damocles above the luxurious 
board. 

The Rubicon of the rails divides us from our hopes 
and anticipations, and when we have passed it, afflic- 
tion has tempered us to moderate joys. The rails are 
as the purgatory through which we must wander before 
ascending to the blessings of paradise. 

It is a common error to suppose our street-railways 
were made for New-York. New- York was made for 
them. The island was formed by nature expressly for 
their construction, as a glance at the City map will 
instantly show. Without them people might get home 
too soon, and the weekly bills of mortality would be 
too small. Without them human patience and strength, 
fortitude and agility, would be less valued because less 



468 The Great Metropolis. 

needed. New- York would be the very city of delights 
— a Sodom and Gomorrah perhaps — would undergo a 
revolution of agreeableness, but for the iron bonds 
that bind us to a cruel doom and the inexorable destiny 
of riding on the cars. 

This City is for its sins accursed with at least twenty 
street-railways in the worst possible condition, running 
wherever one does not want to go, through the most 
repulsive quarters. They make money beyond all 
proportion to their investment; the public patronizing 
them liberally because the roads cheat passengers reg- 
ularly, and are opposed on principle to granting any 
accommodation. The roads have no rights (those of 
rendering their customers as uncomfortable as possible 
are of course natural and inalienable) that vehicles are 
bound to respect ; and every vehicle that can interfere 
with the progress of a car has won the favor of fortune. 
The commerce of the Metropolis is opposed to the rail- 
ways, and does everything in its power to increase their 
odiousness. Every possible box and bale, every truck 
and truckman that can be used to obstruct the roads 
is brought into requisition. 

Wagons bearing huge stones and ponderous machin- 
ery lie in wait for cars, and break down across the 
track. Brick piles tumble at the precise hour one 
selects to go up town, and cover the rails with impass- 
able debris. Even trees blow down, and old women 
are seized with fits, and fall directly across the iron- 
bound way. External, no less than human nature, 
seems in league against the roads ; and yet the passen- 
gers alone are the sufferers. Everybody and every- 
thing declare the railways nuisances, yet they endure 



Street-Railways. 469 

and continue in the face of all opposition, and before 
the serious discountenance of the deities themselves. 

The railways are all close corporations. The mana- 
gers and stockholders always deny their profits. They 
secretly divide 15, 20 and 25 per cent, and beg for 
new privileges to sustain themselves. They declare 
they are merely anxious to accommodate the public, 
and the only man who ever was accommodated by 
them died the next moment from the unexpectedness 
of the sensation. 

The more money the roads make, the meaner they 
get. The larger their dividend, the greater their cur- 
tailment of the starvation-salaries of the drivers and 
conductors. They complain that their employes rob 
them. Why should they not? The owners plunder 
the public; why deny to their servants the same priv- 
ilege? If ever men were justified in stealing, the dri- 
vers and conductors are. Indeed, I am not sure it is 
not a virtue, when they are paid forty or fifty dollars 
a month, by those whose income is half as much an 
hour. 

If the employes would only steal the roads and the 
right of way at the same time, they would be public 
benefactors. We should honor them with crowns, and 
guarantee them against the prosecution of directors. 

The wonderful creature who renders street-railways 
impossible shall have a monument in Union Square 
higher than Washington's, and be represented on two 
horses- What is the father of his country compared 
to the mother of reform? The former was childless. 
The offspring of the latter will be blessed and unnum- 
bered. 

Extinguish the street-railways, root and branch, and 



470 The Great Metropolis. 

steam-cars, the gi'eatest need of the Metropolis, will 
supply their place. 

The traveler in the cars has a career of his own. 
The experience is peculiar as a life in Japan. One 
learns cynicism and feels suffocation in daily rides, so- 
called for courtesy, through the sinuosities and odors 
of the filthiest streets. There is no monotony, some 
romance, much danger and more disgust in the cars. 

Certain preparations are desirable, however, for the 
performance. The regular passenger should lose his 
sense of smell; have the capacity to shut himself up 
like a patent umbrella ; be able to hang on a platform 
by the lids of his eyes; hold drunken men and fat 
w^omen on his lap, eight or nine at a time, without dis- 
satisfaction or inconvenience ; put weeping and scream- 
ing children in his waistcoat pocket, and deliver them 
promptly when wanted; keep his temper and his port- 
monnaie ; be skilled as a pugilist and a crack-shot with 
a revolver. Those are the essentials for anything like 
resignation in the cars. The desiderata are beyond 
enumeration. But the best thing for a man or woman 
to do, who deems himself or herself compelled to ride 
on the cars, is to take some other conveyance. 

A volume might be written on the drolleries and 
adventures of the railway victims. He who has ridden 
on the cars for a few years, and outlived it, is as inter- 
esting as a man who has been through the War, or 
thrice married, or half his life a prisoner with the In- 
dians. He bears a charmed life. He could jump over 
Niagara without disarranging his hair; or walk up to 
the bridal altar without trembling. He could do any- 
thing. He could read the morning papers without 
falling asleep. 



Street-Railways. 471 

He has had all sorts of diseases, from the acuta 
scabies to typhus fever. He has been run over in every 
part of his body. He has been robbed of his valua- 
bles so often that conductors believe him a monoma- 
niac on the subject of pocket-picking. He has been 
beaten and cut and shot almost everywhere between 
his head and heels by pleasant gentlemen who insisted 
upon confounding his watch with theirs, and who held 
it as a cardinal article of faith that any one that insisted 
on keeping his own property deserved killing for the 
first offence, and to be a City Alderman for the second. 

The discomforts and peiils of car -journeying can 
hardly be over-estimated. That our people will under- 
take it merely proves the national recklessness. Pru- 
d<^nt persons leave their purses and watches in the safe 
deposit company, and carry bowie-knives and derrin- 
gers before venturing from Barclay to Forty-second 
street. I am often lost in admiration at the feats of 
postering and corporal convolution I witness on the 
cars, and wonder why people will pay to see the Arabs 
and Japanese, when they can for nothing have much 
more of that exhibition than they want. 

Think of a corpulent fellow balancing himself on a 
young woman's toes, and stealing his neighbor's breast- 
pin without changing his position ! Imagine a slender 
little chap holding himself over the end of the car by 
thrusting his head between the conductor's legs, and 
gamins in the street pulling his boots off, unknown to 
him, while the car goes round the corner! Fancy a 
baby sleeping on the summit of a drunken man's hat 
which is waltzing over the top of the vehicle ! Picture 
a clown making a boot-jack of a pretty seamstress' bon- 
net while his back is endeavoring in vain to accom- 



472 The Great Metropolis. 

modate itself to the digestion of that timid clerical- 
looking person, who is dozing from exhaustion, and 
dreaming his stomach has been made the foundation 
of the new post-office, already complete. Could the 
gymnasts of the other hemisphere do anything like 
that? 

How true it is that we never appreciate what lies 
before us ! The marvels of street-railways impress us 
not. Neither their tragedy nor their comedy touches 
us. We have no idea what we endure, or what we 
escape, when we ride up or down town. We breathe 
an atmosphere of poison, and do not die. We travel 
with thieves and ruffians and murderers, and feel no 
alarm. We seize men by the beard or nose, and hang 
there, our feet resting only on vicious atmosphere, 
until we reach Harlem or Yorkville ; and they never 
murmur; for they can't surrender the luxuries of the 
cars. 

Who says the days of miracles have passed ? 

Our street-railways are still tolerated ; and New- York 
yet remains outside of a lunatic asylum — perhaps be- 
cause it is a paradise of fools. 



CHAPTER LIII. 
THE PAWNBROKERS. 

Love of money is the root of all evil, according to 
the Scriptures; but in these modern days, want of 
money is nearly as prolific of ill. In great cities where 
almost everything must be bought, poverty is at least 
one parent of sin. The prosperous are rarely tempted ; 
have little excuse for crime. But to those whom indi- 
gence presses, the way to wickedness is all down hill. 

In vast commercial centers, sin is only another name, 
usually, for ignorance or suffering. Where ease and 
culture are, the ghastliness of crime is rarely seen. 
But material necessity drives men headlong, and urges 
them to perdition or to woe. 

These truths are constantly exemplified at the pawn- 
brokers' offices, the sombre half-way houses between 
wretchedness and death. The pawnbroker's shop 
should be under the shadow of the Morgue, for the 
distance between them is often shudderingly short. 
Pawnbrokers' offices are plague spots upon the fair 
forms of cities. They show deep-seated if not in- 
curable disease. They are the symbols of suffering, 
the representatives of misfortune and of want. They 
cannot exist in entirely healthful atmospheres. Like 



474 The Great Metropolis. 

certain noxious plants, they feed on the poisons of the 



air 



Pawnbrokers' offices are bad signs for cities. Where 
they are most, the places are worst. The locahty that 
favors them is sickly and stricken with grief Dirt, 
and over-crowding, and rum-selling, and prostitution, 
and wretchedness in every form, are fit neighbors for 
pawnbrokers' shops ; for among, and out of, such sur- 
roundings, the three golden balls gleam dismally. 

Our best quarters reveal no pawnbrokers. They 
are banished from the light of content and of comfort. 
They creep out of Broadway even, away from the 
pleasant breathing-places, into the regions where the 
air is foul, and the houses look dark. 

The east side of the town abounds in them. Chat- 
ham street and the Bowery are devoted to them. 
There are several hundreds, probably, in the whole 
City. They grow with its growth of poverty, and 
strengthen with its strength of misfortune. They may 
not impress others as they do me. But I never pass 
them on the fairest day, that the sun does not seem a 
little obscured, and the freshest breeze touching them 
has the sense of taint. 

Pawnbrokers are born ; they are rarely made. Like 
corporations, they have no souls. They subsist on 
adversity as vultures on carrion. They are of ill 
omen, and riot in ruin. They are of one race, gen- 
erally, and look like cruel brothers, banded together 
in the cause of avarice against humanity. 
' The phrenologists are fond of giving typical heads, 
calling them the thinker, the observer, the bully, the 
fool. Why don't they give the pawnbroker ? He is 
distinctive. He is a human type of inhumanity. You 



The Pawnbrokers. 475 

would know him among a thousand men. His eye is 
keen, but cold and pitiless. His complexion is un- 
wholesome. His atmosphere repels you. His beak is 
prominent and sharp. His movements are stealthy. 
His air is treacherous. When he passes, if you are 
sensitive, you shudder without seeing him, and in- 
stinctively feel for your pocket-book. No doubt he 
has a heart somewhere, could you but find it ; but it 
is not in his business. When he enters his shop, he 
shuts up the troublesome organ, locks it, and hangs 
the key out of reach. 

" Come hither, ye that are needy," he says, " and if 
ye have aught, it shall be taken from you." 

I presume he reasons himself into a certain stern 
justice of his calling. Perhaps he says to himself: "I 
am hard ; but the World is hard also. I am pitiless, 
but destiny is pitiless. I must live. I am against my 
kind ; but my kind is against me. Am I not wise to 
steel myself against my fellows, who would cheat me 
if they could?" 

The pawnbroker offends not the law — the law that 
legislators make. Neither does the smooth destroyer 
of human happiness, the quiet treader upon tender 
hearts. Alas, that the deepest crimes are those the 
law cannot reach ! 

Pawnbrokers' ofl&ces are different in seeming, though 
their dealings are all alike. They show the close con- 
nection between moral and material purity. They are 
generally dismal and unclean. They are musty, and 
savor of foulness. Dust and grime are upon them. 
They reek with unwelcome odors. But sometimes 
they affect cheerfulness and pleasantness. They put 
flowers on their counters, and birds against their walls. 



476 The Great Metropolis. 

But they are the wreaths on tombs. The flowers have 
little fragrance ; the birds will hardly sing. Nature 
has her own secrets, and she cannot deceive. 

Look into yonder shop ! A fleet of all wares seems 
to have stranded within its walls. What old jewelry 
and old clothes establishments have emptied themselves 
there! What glitter, and gewgaws, and rubbish! 
What odds and ends of civilized forms are these ! 
Has the Nile of creation overflowed, and left these 
debris upon its banks ? One wonders so small a place 
can hold such variety. Here are watches of every 
pattern and value, from the elegant and modern chro- 
nometer, to the queer, old-fashioned time-piece George 
the First might have carried ; from the dainty, enam- 
eled trinket that may very naturally have forgotten to 
reckon time in some sweet woman's bosom, to the 
pewter monster created to deceive. Here are dia- 
monds, and rubies, and pearls, and emeralds in gold 
forms, that our great-grandmothers wore, and in gold 
fresh and bright as from Broadway cases. 

Weapons of divers sorts are in the place, as if the 
broker had gone with a search-warrant for arms, over 
all the World. Guns, and pistols, and knives, and 
swords, and daggers. Curiously wrought, some of 
them ; such as I seem to have seen in Sicily, Smyrna, 
India and Arabia. A Colt's revolver lies against a 
Revolutionary musket. A Spanish stiletto supports 
itself upon an American bowie-knife. A delicate 
poniard hangs from the same nail with a Scotch broad- 
sword. 

What a heap of clothing, too ! The remnant of 
Life's masquerade might have ended here. The last 
revelers must have been frightened, slipped out of 



The Pawnbrokers. 477 

their costumes, and fled. The fashions of centuries 
seem represented. Gowns that the duchess of Ports- 
mouth might have worn for profligate Charles' admi- 
ration, or Maintenon asked Louis to approve, or Agnes 
Sorrel put on to find new favor with her royal lover. 
That resembles the dress the handsome English w^oman 
danced in that memorable evening at Brighton, and 
ran away in, perhaps, the next morning, with her 
lover, her husband's best friend. This delicate, but 
now soiled pearl-colored silk, I imagine I waltzed with 
last season, at the Academy, in a space five feet square. 
But I dare say I am at fault. My imagination deceives 
me as it did about the wearer. She was a darling 
while I flattered her ; but a devil when I told her the 
truth. 

We wear the invisible cap, you know. You and I 
will stand aside, reader, and see who patronizes the 
broker. Our Hebrew friend is engaged in filing a 
gold coin, and won't perceive us, so intent is he upon 
his little fraud. 

No grief in this showy, coarse woman's face as she 
enters. She is gaily and expensively attired. She is 
painted like a new sign-board, and redolent of musk. 
Her voice is unpleasant, and her syntax blunders. 

" What'll you lend me on this 'ere? (She offers a 
large gold miniature, with a sad, feminine face that 
looks older from trouble than years.) You see it's 
purty." 

''Yell, madam, ve can't shell dese tings. Osher 
beeble's picshers ishn't vorsh much vid us. Only 
goot for ole golt, dat ish all, madam, I pledges you 
mine vort of honor. I geeve you fife toUars — dash 
ish more dan it ish vorsh, I shvear." 



478 Thid Great Metropolis. 

" well, take it along. I don't want it. It makes 
me feel onpleasant whenever I look at it." 

She delivers the miniature, receives the money, and 
trips out. 

"Dat ish a goot bargain," chuckles Mr. Abrahams. 
" I knows dem kind of vimmen. Dey'll take anyshing. 
I can git twenty -five dollars for dis any time I vant. 
I hope I ave more cushtomers like her." 

The miniature has a history, as almost everything 
else has in a pawnbroker's collection. It belonged to 
a poor seamstress who came to the City from New- Jer- 
sey, and with whom fortune went ill. She was thrown 
out of employment ; was almost starving ; was driven 
to prostitution. For two years she led a life she hourly 
revolted at. She fell sick of l^rain fever. Before a 
week was over, the proprietress of the house in which 
she sold herself — the coarse woman that has just de- 
parted — demanded payment of the girl's board. — ■ 
Money the girl had not, nor a friend in the whole City. 
The hard woman searched her trunk ; found the min- 
iature of the poor child's mother, and seized it for 
debt. Edith pleaded hard for that ; but she pleaded 
to marble. Forsaken, wretched, desperate, consumed 
with fever, mad with sufferings of body and mind, she 
went out that very night ; begged money enough to 
buy laudanum, and was found dead in the morning. 
Old as the story is, it were blessing if age could rob 
it of its horror. 

This sleek-looking person puffs his cigar calmly as 
he draws a fine watch and chain from his pocket, and 
lays them silently on the counter. " Feefty dollar," 
hesitatingly utters Mr. Abrahams. 

"0 you be d d! Give me a hundred, and you 

shall have it." 



The Pawnbroker. 479 

"Veil, I'll shust tell you, Misther Munroe. Dis 
vatch " 

" dry up, you old Jew ! Give me tlie money or 
the watch ! " 

" You'se a sharp shentleman ; " and the Israelite 
tries to laugh, as he hands over a hundred dollar note. 

"Sharp, you old scoundrel? The watch is worth 
three times this. Ill redeem it to-morrow. But I 
had a bad run at faro last night. Better luck to- 
night." 

Soliloquizing he departs. 

The watch belonged to a merchant in West Broad- 
way. His son has been gambling lately ; and his fa- 
ther refusing to give him money, the young scape- 
grace carries off the paternal chronometer; places it 
before the hungry tiger, and the tiger devours it at a 
mouthful. 

A low, square forehead thrusts itself into the door- 
way. A bad eye darts into the shop, and then up the 
street and down and across. Then a heavy form with 
a light step advances warily. 

" Somethin' han'some this mornin' Abrahams. Good 
for sore eyes, old cully." 

"Come dish way," and the broker beckons the bru- 
tal-looking man into a little room in the rear. 

A conversation in a low tone ; and in a few moments 
the cautious animal creeps out; again darts his eye 
up and down and across the street, and hurriedly dis- 
appears. 

The broker returns to the shop, his eyes dancing 
over a pair of bracelets that kindle in the light. In 
his gladness he knocks down a musket in the corner. He 
starts in terror ; conceals his treasure, and tries to look 



480 The Great Metropolis. 

bland and innocent, which makes him seem twice a 
villain. 

The bracelets were stolen two nights before by the 
burglar who brought them there, from a house in Twen- 
ty-third street, where the inmates sleep sound, and leave 
their keys in the doors. 

Mr. Abrahams has a number of such customers, but 
he does not keep what they leave with him in pledge ; 
for he fears the police may be looking for the stolen 
wares, and knows that they will never be redeemed. 

Pale and sad is she who comes so timidly in. She 
looks the picture of pity. Any lineament of her face 
would melt any heart but a pawnbroker's. Lamartine 
would write a poem to it ; and an unsentimental Amer- 
ican would give it five dollars. She trembles, and is 
so nervous she cannot speak while she draws from 
her bosom a little gold cross and chain. She turns 
partially, and kisses them ere she delivers them to his 
unholy hands. She puts her delicate hand to her 
slender chest, and coughs hollowly. Her lips move, 
but no audible sound escapes. 

"Vas ish it, mish? I cannot hear you." 

She summons courage and strength, and says, "My 
mother is dying, sir. We have no money in the house. 
I can't even buy medicine for her. Give me some- 
thing for the little cross. But keep it, please. It is 
very precious to me. I'll redeem it when my poor 
mother is dead; for then I can work again." 

Tears choke her, and, putting her head in her hands, 
she sobs bitterly. 

"Your mutter is dyin'; oh, yes; mutters die like 
everybody elsh. But is it sholid gold, mish? I give 
two toUars." 



The Pawnbrokers. 481 

*' Two dollars?" and the weeping girl looks up. "It 
cost $30." 

"But den you see prishes has gone up so dese tings 
isn't worsh so much as dey vas. Two tollar is de full 
value. Nopoddy would geeve more." 

"I thought you would give me at least $10. But I 
must take what I can get. Do not detain me, please. 
There's nobody but a little girl who lives down stairs 
with mother." 

"Dere ish two tollar. I would not geeve so mooch. 
But we musht be sharitable to de poor. De Hebrews 
always ish." 

The girl was gone without hearing this richly-de- 
served eulogium upon the remnant of the Lost Tribes. 

Such are but a few of the scenes that daily occur at 
tlie pawnbroker's. He is patronized by gamblers, 
courtesans, adventuresses, thieves, and men-about-town. 
If they were his only customers, it would be well. But 
the honest poor, the suffering needy, the unfor- 
tunate, the outcast, the miserable waifs floating be- 
tween despair and suicide, are taken in his cruel net 
They all pay tribute to his avarice. Every fresh call 
makes them wretcheder and more dependent. The 
small "advances" they get are wrung out of their 
blood and being. Each loan is a new fetter and an- 
other stab. The pawnbroker covers them— with a 
shroud — and helps them — to a pauper's grave. They 
never reach him until friends and fortune have deserted 
them. When they knock at his door hope has almost 
gone out of their heart. The three balls represent 
poverty, misery, abandonment. When their shadow 
has fallen often upon the needy it is rarely lifted. 

The shade of the pawnbroker's shop is baleful as 



482 The Great Metropolis. 

that of the flibled Upas. Content quits the boiTOT^er 
at the threshold, and adversity and woe bring him 
back. Dissipation and idleness frequently lead to it ; 
but they who are victims of one or the other, are not 
less to be pitied because their temperament binds them 
to their courses. Struggle as we may, organization 
and circumstance are the genii that control our lives. 

Every pledge has its secret history. A tender and 
tearful idyl is hidden in that necklace ; a strange ro- 
mance is locked up in this casket; a tragedy of life 
and love is in the well-worn cashmere shawl. The 
pistol ticketed 415 made a death that startled the com- 
munity. The musket in the corner killed Albert Sid- 
ney Johnson at Shiloh. The carbine wreathed with 
cobwebs made the fatal wound of Stonewall Jackson, 
and blew perhaps a whole year out of the War. The 
locket with the golden hair nestling in it like a sun- 
beam might tell a tale so sad that to hear it would be 
to weep. The cameo pin was worn on a pagan bosom 
that stilled its pangs of passion with poisoned wine. 
The garnet ring was worn by one of whom the World 
has heard. It passed from him to a leman's finger, and 
now burns for the unforgotten shame of a deserted wife 
and a base intrigue. 

The prose and poetry, the sin and suffering, the ro- 
mance and reality, the comedy and tragedy of life are 
strangely blended at the pawnbroker's; and he who 
could unravel all the strange facts from the heteroge- 
neous mass could give new plots to new Cinthios, and 
wonderful narratives for Bocaccios yet unconceived. 



CHAPTER LIV. 
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY. 

^ What is at present known as the Children's Aid So- 
ciety is one of the most valuable and deserving among 
the many charities of the Metropolis. 

A prominent feature of the society is the newsboys' 
lodging-house, for many years in Fulton street, near 
Nassau, but recently removed to 49 and 51 Park place. 
The house was established in 1854, by the Rev. Charles 
L. Brace, who had been pained to observe the little 
vagabonds sleeping in boxes, stairways, and coalholes, 
in the vicinity of the newspaper offices. He called 
the subject to the attention of a number of benevo- 
lent persons ; and the first means to defiay the expens- 
es of the enterprise were raised in the Rev. Theodore 
Cuyler's church. The earliest difficulty in the way 
was to obtain a place for the newsboys, who were not 
then any more than they are now, a very inviting 
class to those whose sympathies are wholly of an aes- 
thetic character. Various localities were found ; but 
no one would have the soiled and sinful urchins on 
his premises. 

At last, Moses Y. Beach, of the old Sun, offered the 
loft of his building for the purpose, and said the boys 
should be kept there if every tenant left. The quar- 
ters were not pleasant by any means. They were fes- 



484 The Great MExnoroLis. 

tooned with cobwebs and frescoed with dirt; but soap 
and water, whitewash and paint, soon rendered them 
habitable, and even respectable. 

Accommodations for 75 or 80 lodgers were prepared ; 
notice given in the daily papers, and the leaders of 
the boys informed of the fact. For a short time the 
superintendent had considerable trouble with some of 
the little wanderers ; but discipline and order were 
soon secured. The boys could not understand what 
all this care for them meant. They were naturally 
suspicious ; thought it was a prelude and disguise to 
some kind of house of refuge : they even termed it 
a Sunday school trap ; but they were so kindly treated 
and given so much freedom, that they finally concluded 
the intention was to benefit them. 

Gambling and useless spending of money were the 
most grievous faults of the lodgers. Some of them 
earned $4 or $5, and others only 75 cents to $1 a day; 
but all their earnings, whether great or small, went for 
the theater, cards, dice, betting and lottery tickets ; 
while they remained ragged and needy as ever. To 
counteract such follies, checkers, backgammon, and 
dominoes were introduced with excellent efiect; and a 
bank was also established. 

The bank is a table with a drawer, divided into sepa- 
rate compartments, with a slit in the lid, — each com- 
partment being numbered and reserved for a different 
depositor. Into the little boxes the boys put their 
money ; and at the end of a month, it is returned to 
them, to do what they choose with it. They are gene- 
rally surprised to find how much they have saved, and 
either buy clothes or place their money in a regular 
savings bank. The custom cures most of them of ex- 



Childrens' Aid Society. 485 

travagance. They are paid five per cent, interest per 
month, and premiums are given to the lads who save 
the most. They save $200 to $250 a year, independent 
of what they deposit and invest for their own benefit. 

The present house is a vast improvement o n theold 
one. It is a handsome building ; three floors are used ; 
and the rent is $4,500 per annum. It has large, airy 
dormitories, bath-rooms, gymnasium, school-room, and 
chapel,— $8,000 or $10,000 having been expended 
in fitting up the building. The directors hope soon 
to erect a house of their own in the Bowery; and 
probably they will have the necessary means before an- 
other year. 

The house now has accommodations for 260 boys. 
They pay five cents for their bed and five cents for 
their meals, — a small payment rendering them inde- 
pendent, and exercising a good influence that would 
not exist if they were treated as paupers. If the 
little fellows have no means, they are provided with 
food and shelter just the same, and make payment 
when they can. Those who are able rarely fail to 
meet their obligations ; and the training they receive 
inspires them with a sense of honesty and honor. 

Since the establishment of the house, over 300,000 
lodgings have been supplied to homeless boys ; and it 
is estimated that 40,000 different lads have been the 
recipients of the charity. The lodgers have contribu- 
ted nearly $3,000 a year to the support of the institu- 
tion, and the receipts from that source are constantlv 
and steadily increasing. 

The house is not a home, as many suppose. It is 
the special design of the directors that it shall not be. 
If it were, the lodgers would lose their self-reliance 
and ambition. 



486 The Great Metkopolis. 

Emigration is one of the pecnliar and best features 
of the house. The lodgers are sent to the country, 
and there provided with homes. They are shipped in 
companies, and at very considerable expense, to all 
parts of the country, but mostly to the West. A single 
company, which varies from 15 to 100, sometimes 
costs $1,000. During the past year, 1,381 boys emi- 
grated; and 473 girls, 38 men, and 51 women, from 
other charitable institutions in the City, — making a 
total of 1,943. The expenditure of this house for the 
year was $9,916.31, deducting $3,177.69 paid by the 
bovs. 

The effect of the society is shown in the decrease of 
street-vagrants and wanderers from 40,000 in former 
years to 15,000 to 20,000 at present Of the whole 
number for the year, 147 were restored to their friends. 

The Girls' Lodging-house, No. 205 Canal street, is not 
designed for the fallen or for mature women, but for 
young persons exclusively who have not been tempted 
into the one sin society is so loth to forgive in the 
other sex, and so prompt to pardon, as if a glory, in ours. 
The superintendent's orders are not to admit girls 
over 18, unless in cases of emergency or evident suffer- 
ing. The house has been sorely in need of funds; but 
what means it has had it has expended judiciously. It 
is economically and plainly conducted; but it is an 
improvement on what the poor girls have been accus- 
tomed to. During eight and a half months, nearly 
1,000 girls were lodged. During the past year, 1,079 
were lodged, and 10,216 lodgings given, of which 
3,400 were paid; 29,761 meals furnished, and 6,805 
paid. Of the number, 158 girls obtained situations; 
19 found employment; 44 returned to friends; 49 



The Children's Aid Society. 487 

went to other institutions; 50 went West, and one to 
Europe. 

The receipts during the year were $1,380.36, and 
the expenditures three times as much. Many of the 
inmates are girls from the country, who come to the 
City with the hope of improving their condition, or 
tempted by what they conceive to be its attractions- 
Some are driven from their homes by the unhappiness 
they experience there, and others by a spirit of des- 
peration. 

Girls who go there without money can pay for their 
board by work. They perform the household duties, and 
some of them learn to sew excellently. The discipline 
is very light, and little is required. They can leave 
the house when they like; but few, unless they run 
away, depart until they have procured good situations. 
They have pleasant social gatherings and evening par- 
ties, when they talk, read, and have quiet games. It 
not unfrequently happens that girls who have been 
betrayed into unchastity are reformed at the house. 
When quite young, repentant, and anxious to lead a 
better life, much success has been had with them. 

The Refuge for Homeless Children, corner of Eighth 
avenue and Twenty-fourth street, is another lodging- 
house for boys. This charity is maintained at very 
small cost, the rent being more than met by sub-letting. 
The net cost of last year, with an average of 65 boys 
to feed and lodge at night, was only $1,075 to the pub- 
lic. The total expenses for that time was $5,141.68. 
Eight hundred and ninety-seven were received, of 
whom 11 were sent West; 18 obtained situations; 36 
were restored to friends ; 85 sent to friends; 9 to other 
institutions. The number of lodgings furnished was 



488 The Great Metkofolis. 

23,933, of which but 933 were free. The meals sup 
plied were 39,401, and 3,655 of them free. 

Another boys' lodging-house, for the benefit of the 
homeless boys of the Eleventh ward, is doing a good 
work. It furnished during the past year 11,583 
lodgings, and 12,810 meals, at the usual price, 5 cents 
each, and collected $1,175.54. It lodged during the 
year 635 boys. 

Other lodging-houses are open for homeless boys, in 
First avenue, and at Corlear's Hook ; and twenty in- 
dustrial schools, with four night schools and four free 
reading-rooms, are included in the Aid Society. The 
schools have 47 teachers, and the children in attend- 
ance, nearly all of them little girls, numbered in tlie 
aggregate last year almost 6,000. The average attend- 
ance was more than 2,000. One school. No 110 Cen- 
tre street, exclusively for Italian children, contains 
about 200. Another, solely for Germans, No 272 
Second street, has some 400 in attendance. Still an- 
other for colored children. No. 185 Spring street, has 
nearly 100. A new school, lodging-house and free 
reading-room, opened last year, at No. 327 Rivington 
street, has some ninety children, and the lodging-house 
nightly shelters, on an average, eighty homeless boys. 
Some of the best women of the City voluntarily and 
gladly devote themselves to the industrial schools. 
They feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and enlighten 
the ignorant. Many of the little outcasts are unfit to 
be seen until they are supplied with garments. 

The expenses of the Aid Society last year were 
about $115,000, and for fifteen years $510,243.35. 
The number of children who have emiCTated was 207 
in 1854, and last year 1,943, — a steady increase each 



The Children's Aid Society. 489 

year, and swelling in the whole fifteen years to 14,879, 
nearly nine-tenths of whom may be said to have been 
literally saved. 

The inner history of the Society would read like a 
romance, and prove conclusively the extent and solid- 
ity of its benefits. Dozens of men and women, now 
well educated, in prosperous circumstances and hon- 
ored members of society, were not many years since, 
little outcasts and wanderers, and would have come 
to a bad end but for the protecting arras of the Aid 
Society. 

In 1856, a boy of sixteen lost his parents through 
excessive intemperance, and, thrown upon the street, 
he began to sell newspapers for a livelihood. He was 
intelligent, energetic and persevering; but he had in- 
herited a love for liquor that he could not resist. He 
squandered his money; was a drunkard in a few 
months, and would have died in the gutter but for the 
influence of the Society. Some of the benevolent 
persons belonging to that organization saw him one 
night when he entered the lodging-house intoxicated; 
cared for him kindly, and the next morning, when he 
was sober, talked to him earnestly and tenderly, paint- 
ing what would be his future unless he reformed. He 
said he could not stop drinking ; that he had tried in 
vain. They urged him to abstain for a week, at the 
end of that time, to make it a fortnight, and then a 
month. 

The experiment was entirely successful. He did 
not drink a drop of spirituous liquor for six months, 
and has not from that day to this. He was j^laced in 
a large mercantile establishment as a messenger. He 
was quick-witted, trustworthy, truthful, industrious. 



490 The Great Metropolis. 

He lost no opportunity of learning. He attended the 
night-schools, and at the end of the second year was 
made assistant book-keeper. He was again advanced 
and his salary fixed at $2,500. An opportunity for a 
good business interest occurred in the West, and the 
senior member of the New-York firm lent him the 
money to put into the concern. He became a partner.; 
is there now; happily married; worth $30,000, with 
years of usefulness before him. His example is one of 
many. 

Religious exercises and instructions are given in all 
the houses and schools. An effort is made to prevent 
the boys from continuing long as newspaper-sellers, 
boot-blacks, rag-pickers, messengers, or peddlers, as 
the continuance of such callings is found to be perni- 
cious. A good home in the country is the best place 
for the children ; and the Aid Society is doing such 
a noble and excellent work in that way, as few persons 
who have not examined into its system and operations 
can believe. All who visit the institutions approve 
and applaud the charity, which, it is to be hoped, will 
be enlarged and perfected more and more as the City 
grows and the years go on. 



CHAPTER LY. 
JAMES GORDON BENNETT. 

James Gordon Bennett, the journalist, is known on 
both sides of the Atkntic ; James Gordon Bennett, the 
man, is hardly known outside of the Herald office. In- 
deed, persons who have been employed in that estab- 
lishment for years have never set eyes on its famous 
editor and proprietor. All his power, reputation and 
influence exist in and through the Herald. In it, he is 
every thing ; out of it, nothing. 

Probably the history of journalism in this or any 
other country does not show another instance of such 
complete absorption by, and identification with, a news- 
paper as that of Bennett and the Herald. To the Her- 
ald he has devoted most of his mature life — his best, 
and ripest, and richest years. All that he is and has 
been he has poured, with mental and physical prodigal- 
ity, into the great newspaper which bears his name, and 
has yielded him a vast fortune for his purpose and his 
pains. 

Bennett was born of Catholic parents, in 1797, in 
Banffshire, Scotland, and remained at school there until 
he was fourteen or fifteen. He was then sent to a Cath- 
olic academy at Aberdeen, with the view of taking sa- 
cerdotal orders ; but after staying there for two or three 
years, during which time he devoted himself assiduously 



492 The Great Metropolis. 

to his books, he became dissatisfied, and resolved to 
surrender all priestly aspirations. His parents, said to 
be wealthy and influential, had set their hearts upon his 
leading a clerical life, and were so much opposed to his 
abandoning it that a rupture ensued between them and 
their boy, and he quitted his native land forever. 

\'oung Bennett, in 1819, with a companion of 
about his own age, embarked on a vessel coming to 
America, and arriving at Halifax, without money or 
friends, took to teaching for a livelihood. He did not 
succeed to his satisfaction, and in a few months went 
to Portland, Me., and then to Boston, where he found 
employment as a proof-reader in Wells & Lily's publish- 
ing house. At that time he was much addicted to soli- 
tary rambles and the exercise of his imagination. He 
wrote a number of poems of rather a cynical, semi- 
sentimental kind, suggested by his lonely walks in and 
about the metropolis of New-England. 

In 1822 he came to New-York and engaged himself 
to some of the daily and weekly papers as a reporter 
and general writer. But wearying of his journalistic 
connections, he went to Charleston, S. C, where he was 
employed by the Com-ier as a translator of French and 
Spanish, occasionally contributing sketches and poems 
to the paper. In his early years he was singularly rest- 
less, though very industrious and of remarkable versa- 
tility in composition. After a year or two he returned to 
New- York, where he undertook to set up a commercial 
school, but either failed or abandoned his design. He 
next turned his attention to political economy, and de- 
livered a series of lectures on the subject, in the vestry 
of the Old Dutch Church, in Ann Street. 

About this time he began to entertain the idea of 



James Gordon Bennett. 493 

adopting journ.alism as a profession, having come to the 
conclusion that it was his vocation. In 1825 he made 
his first effort as a proprietor, in the Sunday Courier ; 
but not succeeding he became a reporter and writer for 
its columns. He left the paper, however, in a few 
months, began the National Advocate, a Democratic 
journal, and opposed the tariff and the system of bank- 
ing. In 1827 he became a warm advocate of Martin 
Van Buren, at that time in Congress, and, on the de- 
cease of the Advocate he associated himself with M. 
M. Noah in the editorial management of the Enquirer, 
then in the Tammany Hall interest. The year follow- 
ing he went to Washington as correspondent of the pa- 
per, and, after serving faithfully and zealously in that 
capacity for about twelve months, he became the asso- 
ciate editor of the Courier and Enquirer, the two jour- 
nals having been merged in one. Bemaining two or 
three years in that capacity, he quarreled with James 
Watson Webb, the leading editor, went out of the con- 
cern, and issued the Daily Glohe. The new paper lived 
exactly one month and expired. It did not require 
much capital to conduct a paper thirty-five years ago, 
even in the Metropolis, but the funds required for such 
enterprises were very difficult to raise. 

Bennett, then in his thirty-fifth year, had been con- 
nected with at least a dozen papers, in different capa- 
cities, and had been any thing but prosperous. Those 
who knew him declared he had mistaken his calling ; 
that while he had decided ability and energy, he lacked 
tact and managing power. He, however, retained his 
faith in himself, and was wont to say he had never got 
started right. He continually talked about having a 
paper of his own some day, which he felt sure would be 



494 The Great Metropolis. 

a great success. It is quite likely he had become some- 
what discouraged by his failures here, for he went to 
Philadelphia at the latter joart of 1832, raised money 
enough to purchase the Pennsylvanian, and assumed 
editorial charge of it. That city was not large enough 
for him, and he still believed New- York to be the best 
place for him to fix the lever with which he hoped to 
move the American world. 

Consequently, after two years' residence on the Dela- 
ware, he came back to the Hudson, and in 1835 issued 
the first number of the Herald. 

Bennett had ver}^ little money — only a few hundred 
dollars, it is said, when he set up his last newspaper in 
the basement of a building in Ann Street, not far from 
where the present marble structure rears its costly head. 
His editorial desk was a board on two barrels, and on 
that he wrote untiringly, for the first few weeks doing 
all the editorial work himself, filling the little sheet 
with verses, aromatic gossip, pungent paragraphs, city 
sketches, and such light and varied matter as the public 
always like to read. 

Whatever the character of the contents of the Herald 
in those days, Bennett knew what the mass of people 
relished, and he catered to them zealously. The paper 
was a pecuniary success from the beginning. In a few 
weeks he was enabled to employ assistance, making a 
feature of city news and local events, in which he had 
no rivalry, the dailies being heavy, and prosy to the 
last degree. The Commercial Advertiser, Evening Post 
and Journal of Commerce were alive then, but they 
seemed scarcely conscious of the fact, and did nothing 
to dispute the more modern and novel field the Herald 
had opened. 



James Gordon Bennett. 495 

The great fire in tliis City, soon after the birth of the 
new paper, gave Bennett ample opportunity to sliow 
his enterprise, and he embraced it vigorously. The fol- 
lowing morning the little daily contained a full account 
of the " destructive conflagration," as the reporters 
would call it, with all the incidents .and accidents given 
in a vivid and picturesque style. That was really, as 
the Herald is so fond of stating, a new era in journalism ; 
and from that day to this, merely as a newspaper, it 
has probably had no equal anywhere. 

Bennett the man is Bennett the journalist. He has 
breathed his individuality and all his idiosyncrasies into 
it. Not many persons believe in the Herald. Its in- 
fluence is limited among cultivated people ; and yet 
hardly any one denies its tact and enterprise. Bennett 
makes no pretension, privately, to molding public opinion: 
he follows it. He is inconsistent, because it is his interest ; 
for his avowed object has been from the first to give the 
news and make money. Principle he has not, because he 
believes in no one. He has no convictions, and does not 
think any one has them. Nothing, in his view, deserves 
serious treatment. All men and all pursuits are shams. 
One thing is no better than another, and we are all selfish 
to the core when found out. 

He understands the philosophy of journalism ; that 
a newspaper is entirely a thing of to-day ; that few 
readers care for the issue of yesterday or to-morrow, 
which are as if they had never been. Therefore he 
issues every number of the Herald as if there had been 
none before, and would be none after it. He believes 
with Emerson that " Consistency is the hobgoblin of 
little minds," and acts accordingly. 

Privately, Bennett is a very honest and strictly moral 



496 The Great Metropolis. 

man. He owes no one, and so fur as I can learn, never 
did owe a dollar ; paying his debts having always been 
with him the first of obligations. He was never other 
than industrious and abstemious, and is said to be very 
charitable without the least ostentation. Ever since his 
marriage, which was^ I think, in 1837, he has been a 
pattern of domesticity; is extremely devoted to his 
wife, a highly accomplished woman, and his two children, 
James Gordon, Jr., the manager of the Herald^ and a 
daughter Lily, a promising girl of sixteen. He has a 
very handsome house at Washington Heights, and a fine 
private residence in Fifth Avenue. His income from the 
Ilerald'x^ fully $300,000 per annum, and his fortune is 
estimated at $3,000,000 or $4,000,000, every penny of 
which he has made by his journal. He is, and has 
always been, the opposite of gregarious. He never went 
into society, and the sole instance I can remember of 
his presence at any festival or public occasion, was at 
the Sir Morton Peto dinner at Delmonico's in the Autumn 
of 18G5. Then he seemed quite lost and ill at ease. 
He did not appear to know any one, nor any one to know 
him. 

When sought, he is affable enough, but talks little, 
and has no relish for society of any kind. 

Personally, he is over six feet in height, but is now 
bent with age. He is rather slight, his eye gray, his 
hair white, and worn rather long, with a strange, half 
cynical, half comical expression, which makes his coun- 
tenance difficult to read. He still speaks with a strong 
Scotch accent, which is very marked when he is irri- 
tated, and his irritation has increased with his years. 
His intellect is clear and vigorous, and his acquirements 
numerous. He writes nothing in thase daysj but 



James Gordon Bennett. 497 

in his working period he wrote rapidly, nervously, and 
gracefully on almost any subject ; the skepticism, cyni- 
cism, and raillery of his temperament, always cropping 
out. 

Of late years Bennett has shown signs of declining 
health. He takes excellent care of himself, however, 
going to bed every night at nine o'clock. He visits the 
Herald only two or three times a week, but is still in 
every respect its editor, and feels as much interest in it 
as when he toiled to establish it. 

There is little need for his visiting the office often ; 
for he can direct the establishment by telegraph, a wire 
communicating with it from Washington Heights. When- 
ever any event of consequence occurs his opinion is 
obtained in regard to its treatment for the next day's 
paper, the name of the required writer being frequently 
given by him. All the City and leading country dailies 
are taken to his house every morning. He reads them ; 
marks the articles that strike his attention; makes sug- 
gestions as to the editorials ; sees proofs often, in fact ; 
supervises the Herald very much as he used to when 
he wrote on the head of a barrel in the Ann Street cellar. 

Bennett scarcely ever goes off the island ; seldom 
comes to his elegant town-house in the Avenue. He is 
methodical, abstemious, industrious, isolated. He rises 
at live; never calls on anybody, but receives courteously 
and hospitably all who visit him. Mrs. Bennett and her 
daughter are in Europe, where they spend half their 
time, and J. G. B., Jr., is fond of rambling, and wedded 
to his yacht. 

Lonely old man is he ; but he has attained his sole 
ambition — he has made the Herald a great newspaper — 
and in the midst of its reputation James Gordon Ben- 

32 



498 The Great Metropolis. 

nett, the man, is hardly known, rarely esteemed, never 
loved. 

Bennett has few friends — he does not want them, I 
suspect — no hopes and no ambitions outside of the Her- 
ald, lie can not live much longer ; but while he does, he 
will be its autocrat and master mind ; and his last hours 
will doubtless be comforted with the thought that James 
Gordon Bennett was to the very last the editor and pro- 
prietor of the New-York Herald. 



CHAPTER LVI. 

THE CHINESE EMBASSY IN NEW YORK. 

This chapter shall be devoted to a very liberal trans- 
lation of a letter written by Ghin Sling, one of the 
Chinese embassy, while here, to his friend, Nho Gho, an 
estimable citizen of Foo Chow, and which has appeared 
in the Yali-ki-llyo Linh-lcins-lco (the morning bulletin) 
of that city. The impression and opinions of the intel- 
ligent and observant Celestial are of interest as showing 
how many things in the Metropolis appear to the un- 
biased eyes of a person whose experiences and sym- 
pathies have been so widely different from our own. 
His letter reads as follows : — 

Beloved and serene Nho-Gho, Friend of my Soul 
and Idol of my Heart : I am filled with amazement in 
this new and wonderful country. I admire it very much ; 
but I can t at all comprehend it. This City, which they 
tell me is larger than Peking, and Canton, and Shanghai 
combined, delights and surprises me more and more as 
I get acquainted with it. I can't resist the temptation 
of telling you something about New-York, or Gotham, 
or Manhattan, or the Empire-City, or New-Amsterdam, 
or Swindletown (it has all these names) ; for it is a 
puzzle more ingenious than the ones we used to amuse 
ourselves with when we were at the imperial university 
at Souchong. 



500 The Great Metropolis. 

When we first went to the hotel, — it is named after 
some clergyman, — I ordered a stewed puppy for supper ; 
but the landlord (they call him such because he isn't a 
lord and hasn't any land) told me that he was out of 
puppies ; but that there was one in the room next to his 
which barked all night, and that I was welcome to it. 
He said I must catch it myself, as it was the custom of 
the country for gentlemen of distinction to hunt their 
own game. 

He advised me to stand in front of the door of the 
room, and whistle for a few minutes. I could not 
whistle, — though all the Americans whistle, — so I sang 
the song of our native land, " Hi, Hi, yah-che-ning," at 
the top of my voice. 

The door opened in a moment, and a lady with a 
singular costume, cut low in the neck and short at the 
bottom, hanging loose and entirely plain (I had never 
seen any such before, but I have learned since that it is 
a full evening dress), made her appearance, holding a 
little white woolly dog by a blue ribbon, and crying, 
*' Burglars, burglars." 

I said, " Beautiful lady (she wasn't beautiful at all ; 
but, unless you call all the women beautiful, you are a 
brute), ' Burglars is not my name. I am Ghin-Sling, 
of the Embassy." 

'• Oh, I have often heard of you," she answered. " You're 
an old friend of my husband. He is very fond of you; 
but I hate you." 

I did not like to dispute what she said ; for men w^ho 
contradict women are considered monsters here. I 
thought I'd merely get the dog. I therefore seized the 
blue ribbon, and pulled the little animal along the hall, 
his loud yelps much increasing my appetite. Alas, the 



The Chinese Embassy in New York. 501 

lady made more noise than the dog. She cried " Murder, 
fire, thieves " ; and in a minute the hall was full of per- 
sons, many of them servants, who seized me by the pig- 
tail, and asked me where I was going, and what I was 
about. I 

I said I was about stopped. 

The lady declared I had stolen her poodle (what a 
queer name that, for a dog !) and tried to break into her 
chamber. 

At this I was dumfounded, or found dumb, I don't 
know which, and, with open eyes and mouth, stood 
helpless in the hands of my enemies. 

I recovered my voice at last, and explained that the 
landlord had told me to take the puppy, and have it 
cooked. 

A burly fellow said he'd cook my goose for me. I 
replied I didn't want a goose, but a puppy. 

The landlord was called, and I appealed to him. He 
ordered the man to let go of me, and said he didn't 
mean I should carry off the lady's dog ; that he intended 
it as a jest. '" It's strange, my friend," he added, " that 
you can't take a jest." 

" He can't take any thing but poodles," said the lady 
sharply from behind the door where she had retreated 
because she was too much dressed, I suppose, to receive 
common company. 

The dog was restored to her, and the landlord asked 
me down stairs to try an " eye-opener." I went down 
to what they style the bar, because it is so easy to get 
into it, and tried the eye-opener, which was something 
very hot in a tumbler. 

I liked it, for it made me feel as if I were light as a 
feather, and a mandarin with three pig-tails. I repeated 



502 The Great Metropolis. 

the remedy a number of times, and got lighter and 
lighter. I danced the chop-stick dance, and quoted 
Confucius, which, I was told, sounded like a speech in 
Congress. '\ 

I found, however, the eye-opener, like every thing 
else here, is misnamed ; for my eyes grew so heavy that 
I couldn't keep them open. I made an effort to em- 
brace the landlord, and fell through the window-glass. 
I didn't remember any thing more until I woke up with 
what I thought to be live coals in my mouth, and a feel- 
ing as if the yelping puppy had gotten into my brain. 

I didn't want any more eye-opener. 

My experience at the hotel induced me to go away 
from it immediately after breakfjist. I ordered fried 
rats. They were strange rats I ate. They had wool 
on them ; but I suppose they are different in America 
from the rats in China. 

I hardly knew where to go. So I took a City direc- 
tory, and concluded to visit the different places of inter- 
est in town. I looked for the Morgue, and, following 
the directions of the book, I went up one street and 
down another; retraced my steps; crossed forty or fifty 
back yards ; fell into a number of cellars ; was attacked 
by dogs because I wanted to take some of them to the 
hotel for dinner. I was really sea-sick ; but, deter- 
mined to be guided by the book, I walked into the river. 

This created an excitement on the dock, and a stal- 
wart fellow pulled me out by the pig-tail. I was asked 
my name. I gave it, when the crowd laughed ; some 
declaring I had taken too much water in my gin-sling, 
and others, that I had taken too much gin-sling in my 
water. I was a very singular spectacle when I was 
pulled out. I had an opportunity to judge ; for an en- 



The Chinese Embassy in New York. 503 

terprising photographer of Broadway copied me in water- 
colors before I had been in the river two seconds. He 
sent me one of his pictures, which I inclose to you. 

He asked me to forward him a portrait of the Em- 
peror of China in return, and an autograph letter recom- 
mending his establishment. I did so the next day, and 
I ha^e since learned he exhibits my letter as the original 
manuscript of the editor of the Tribune, an excellent but 
peculiar gentleman, who keeps a private secretary to 
decipher his articles for him after they are written, and 
to inform him when he gets hungry. 

I tried to find Central Park by the directory, and got 
into the Communipaw slaughter-house ; to reach Green- 
wood, said to be the most lively place about New- York, 
and found myself in a beer-brewery. They tell me 
there is a good deal of beer in both localities. After 
that I lost faith in the directory, and, rambling about by 
my own instincts, I got along better. 

I had heard much of the Chinese in Vesey street, — I 
presume it is a misprint for Tea-see street, — and, long- 
ing to meet some of my countrymen who had been here 
a great while, I went there. 

I soon discovered a Chinaman, with a long cue, in our 
native costume. I addressed him in our own celestial 
tongue. 

He replied: "Arrah, now, ye spalpeen, what wud yez 
be afther ? Yer' no Chanymon. Git out wid ye, or I'll 
split the ear of ye, by the mim'ry of St. Pathrick." 

I could not understand such Chinese as that, and con- 
cluded that he must have forgotten his own language, 
he'd been so lon2: in America. 

I determined to buy some of the tea, and I did. I 
drank it the same evening ; but didn't recognize it as 



504 The Great Metropolis. 

tea. It's a new kind, raised mostly in New-Jersey, a 
country the Americans talk of annexing to the United 
States if they can buy it of Camden & Amboy, two gen- 
tlemen who own the entire region, and compel people to 
pay a tax for traveling through it. 

I was rather hungry by this time. I walked up 
Broadway, the principal street, where thousands of per- 
sons perform extraordinary and perilous tricks, such as 
leaping on stages, running under horses' feet, and clam- 
bering over the heads of carmen. They do it for amuse- 
ment ; not charging any thing for the exhibition. The 
police arrest men there often for getting in the way of 
wagons, and fine them, when they have their legs bro- 
ken, for obstructing the progress of commerce. 

When I came opposite a large house where many men 
were eating, I entered and sat down. I was opposite a 
famous juggler, who performed wonderful feats of knife- 
swallowing, and seemed entirely indifferent to the admi- 
ration he excited. A boy came to me and asked me 
what I wanted. Having had unpleasant experience in 
puppies and rats, I asked for crackers. " Chinese crack- 
ers ?" he inquired. 

'' Yes, if you have them." 

" Will you have them light ? " 

" Certainly, the lighter the better." 

In a few minutes he returned with a plate full of the 
little red paper pop-guns we make in our country ; and, 
before I could remonstrate with him, he lighted them, 
saying : — " Look here, old Celestial, this is one of the 
matches made in Heaven !" 

The crackers went off in fine style, and I did like- 
wise. Before I had gotten far, a boy from the eating- 
house ran after me, and pulling my cue (why in the 



The Chinese Embassy in New York. 505 

name of Josh does every one try to take the cue from 
me ?), inquired : "Buy these? Buy these? Good, 
good ; bow, wow, wow !" So speaking, he held up a long 
line of sausages, and again made the bow, wow, wow 
sound. 

I told him I spoke English. Then he remarked : 
" Dog in all of these. I know — we make 'em ourselves. 
Don't use any thing but dog. Get dogs in the Pound, 
every Summer ; make great many sausages out of 'em. 
Genuine dog-sausages. Buy 'em, old fel ?" 

I declined, and the boy left me, with the remark that I 
was an old pudding-head, Avhich no doubt was compli- 
mentary, as it signified something to eat, and that I was 
a man of desert. 

While I continued walking up Broadway, there were 
several alarms of fire, and I saw two or three stores 
burn up — they say " up" when they mean " down," in 
this strange country — in splendid style. I asked where 
the roast pig was ; but was informed they didn't roast 
pigs that way here. 

I met a gentleman looking on like myself, and I ex- 
pressed my surprise at so many fires. 

" The reason," said he, " is the dullness of trade, which 
makes buildings so inflammable, they catch fire when 
there isn't a spark near them." 

I said I couldn't comprehend how the state of com- 
merce could make houses spontaneously combustible. He 
replied that the insurance companies were in my predic- 
ament ; that they couldn't tell either, though they had 
given a deal of attention to the subject. He said the 
best way to insure a house against fire was not to insure 
it at all ; that uninsured buildings, for some mysterious 
reason, wouldn't burn. 



506 The Great Metropolis. 

As I walked on, I noticed a number of signs above 
■underground places, about "pretty waiter-girls." I 
thought I'd like to see them. So I went down into one 
of the saloons, as they are called. The girls carried 
waiters, but not prettiness. Indeed, they were excess- 
ively homely, several of them having painted their 
noses red, and their eyes black and blue, which didn't 
improve their appearance. Two of them came up to 
me, and sat down in my lap, declaring I was a " hunky 
old boy," which I didn't understand. Several placards 
stated that no intoxicating liquors were sold ; and I was 
surprised to see men drink a few glasses of soda-water, 
and go out reeling like sailors in a storm. I believe the 
soda-w-ater in New-York is very strong. The " pretty 
waiter-girls " were very kind to me. They played with 
my pig-tail, and induced me to " treat." They urged me 
to treat again, and I retreated. 

When I got out, I missed my purse, and I suppose the 
good girls took it to remember me by. One of them had 
wished to borrow my watch to take medicine by, she 
said ; but I refused to let her have it. I missed that, 
too. She had helped herself to it, no doubt. 

Dear girl, what a delicate proof of her devotion ! 
What charming surprises this country has for me ! 

I had become very tired by this time. I stepped out 
of Broadway, where I had difficulty in getting along, 
and where everybody seemed to have only a few mo- 
ments left to do something very important. I had 
noticed several men who hurried by me as if they were 
walking for the championship of America, — a patriotic 
obligation here, — and, when I had proceeded a little far- 
ther, I perceived them lounging on the hotel steps, 
yawning from weariness. 



The Chinese Embassy m New York. 507 

A street car passed me, and I was about to get on, 
but the car was crowded inside and out, a dozen men 
holding on by their hands. 

" Come on, Johnny," cried the conductor; "plenty of 
room for j^ou ;" and he reached out, and catching me by 
the cue tied me to the platform. I was dragged for 
several blocks. When he asked for my fare, I said I 
had not ridden, but he swore I had had a preferred seat j 
that it was the custom to charge double for dragging a 
man in that fashion ; but that if any one made a row, 
he could pay single fare and walk, 

I went inside then, as a hundred or two had got ten 
off. I hadn't been there but a few minutes when two 
brutal-looking fellows (I imagine they contradicted 
women, and called them homely) sprang upon the car; 
shook hands with the driver and conductor, and began to 
take the passengers' watches and pocket-books. When 
they demanded mine, I said I had lost them. " Oh, 
yes," they replied, " you've been on another car. Here, 
Bob," said one to the other, " give this chap a pass." 
So " Bob " gave me this slip of stiff paper, on which was 
printed : " Let the bearer alone. We've been through 
him. All right. Bummer & Co." 

The two fellows remained on the car, and in a short 
time began taking the coats of the passengers. Not 
liking that, I got off, and walked to the hotel. 

I was very tired, and ordering a plate of rice and a 
chop-stick, which was a mutton chop when it came, I 
ate it, and went to my room. 

I lay down and reflected on the beautiful freedom of 
the country. In what other land would strange men 
and women help themselves to your watch and purse ; 
pull your pig- tail ; and explode crackers in your face ? 



508 The Great Metropolis. 

0, blessed America, I have never appreciated you half 
enough ! And, so thinking, I turned over and fell 
asleep. 

Adoringly and eternally yours, 

Ghin-Sling. 

Here ends Ghin-Sling's letter, of which I have endeav- 
ored to give the true spirit, and whose openness and can- 
dor no one can help admiring. 



CHAPTER LVII. 
JENKINSISM IN THE METROPOLIS. 

The race of Jenkinses is numerous, enterprising, and 
gifted. Jenkins, the original, and his numerous imi- 
tators, have of late performed many extraordinary feats 
in the way of florid description and picturesque detail. 
Weddings are their delight. They revel in weddings ; 
exhaust metaphor, the dictionary, and patience. I have 
secured for this volume a Jenkins, one who will do honor 
to his tribe. He comes to me highly recommended. 
He can acquit himself more creditably at a dinner, by 
reason of his excellent appetite, and can use more words 
with fewer ideas, than almost any of his profession. He 
has just assisted at a hymeneal union (I employ his ex- 
pression) in the City, and sends me his account, which 
I print with small variation from his eloquent MS. 
Thus it reads ; — 

For months past the most elegant and recherche so- 
ciety of the gilded and perfumed Rosemary square has 
been in a condition of the genteelest excitement over 
the announcement of the engagement of Miss Sophronia 
Clarissa Lovelace, youngest daughter of Peter Lovelace, 
Esq., an accomplished artist in hides and leather, and 
brother of the distinguished William Lovelace, Esq., 
third vice-president of the Boyletown Base Ball club, 
and R. Simpson Wiggins, Esq., a gentlemen of means 



510 The Great Metropolis. 

and culture, who at one time presided over the destinies 
of a tape establishment in Sixth avenue, and won for 
himself fame and fortune by selling short measure with 
a grace and urbanity that w^ill long be remembered. 

Hundreds of beautiful creatures who had vainly 
sighed for R. Simpson Wiggins were distressed and made 
desolate when they heard the news; so painful to 
them, so delightful to Sophronia Clarissa. They for- 
bore to take tea for an hour and a half, and threw out 
dark hints of joining the Sorosis. They yielded, how- 
ever, to the inevitable, and made congratulatory visits 
to the fiancee. They found her beauty changed 
sadly ; but they kissed her, calling her " dear," with 
cherry lips. 

The months of fluttering were quieted when the high 
wedding came off in the church of Saint Hymen, which 
had been newly painted for the occasion, and which 
seemed to smile from its richly stained windows upon 
the lovely couple who were to be made one, unless incom- 
patibility of temperament, or unwillingness of the bride- 
groom to disgorge the spondulicks (a modish phrase for 
paying bills), interfered with their domesticity. 

The scene was imposing and touching to the last de- 
gree. It moved the elder Lovelace to transports of de- 
light ; and he clutched his pocket-book as if he thought 
that instrument of his power Avould henceforth be in less 
demand. 

A dozen milliners and mantua-makers, who stood on 
the outer rim of the brilliant assembly, smiled blandly 
on the bride, and glowered on the bridegroom as though 
they meditated revenge upon his swollen purse. 

A score of bridesmaids, wearing trains that were 
longer and moved slower than those of the Camden and 



Jenkinsism in the Metropolis. 511 

Amboy company, and bearing a sunflower above their 
charmingly retrousse noses (the noses were of the newest 
pattern, and brought over by the last French steamer), 
lent dazzling radiance to the beatitudes of the occasion, 
and promised to keep Lent with as much religious rigor 
as though they had been umbrellas. Their hair was 
splendid, having cost $500 apiece, and every mother's 
daughter claimed she wore the identical tresses severed 
from the head of Marie Antoinette on the eve of her 
execution. The bridesmaids were as accomplished as 
beautiful. They spoke French so excellently that no 
native of Paris could understand them ; were magnifi- 
cent croquet players, and deeply versed in the litera- 
ture of Madame Demorest's magazine. 

As to the bride, how shall we describe her? She 
looked like Venus on the half-shell, or Juno before be- 
ginning a row with Jupiter, or Hebe with the (hic)cup 
of nectar drained by the immortal gods. Heaven was 
in her eye ; and in her hand a handkerchief trimmed 
with lace, wrought in the looms of Hoboken at $50 an 
inch, and which the gallant and chivalrous Wiggins was 
wont to declare over his Rudesheimer he paid $50.75 
an inch for. 

The exaixareration must be fori»;iven to Wiii'icins, in 
consideration of the enthusiasm of love and his fondness 
for base-ball, which we have heretofore neglected to 
mention, and which was largely instrumental in bringing 
to the elder Lovelace's mind his fitness to become a son- 
in-law. 

Miss Lovelace wore a dress of satin damask persiflage, 
with trimmings of Bourdaloue haisezmabouclie, looped up 
with \)ViY\AQ pate de foie gras of petroleum wells in min- 
iature. Her gaiters were of white bourgeois silk, coming 



512 The Great Metropolis. 

above the classic ankle, and lined with perfumed ailes 
do ijapilloyi from Astrachan. She also Avore an over- 
skirt of demi point and demnition-foine Mantalini lace, 
while her imperial veil, covering her from her chignon 
to the Castilian arch of her alabaster foot, was a frag- 
ment of the original vale of tears, usually donned some- 
w^hat later in life. Her gloves were embroidered on the 
back with the monogram of her family, S. H. A. M. ; 
each glove having four fingers and one thumb, and in- 
geniously arranged with a large hole at the end to facil- 
itate the ingress and egress of her fairy-like hand, 
wdiich is asserted to be so good that it will beat four 
aces in the elegant pastime of draw-poker. 

The lady's robe was also trimmed with sprigs of mint, 
specially ordered by the bridegroom, that during their 
bridal tour he might, in the event of reaching an uncivil- 
ized place, make juleps from his wife's toilette. About 
her snowy neck hung a strand of diamonds, dug from 
the mines of Chatham street, and so remarkable that 
three balls were given in their honor when they last 
changed hands. 

Miss Lovelace was finally attired in a pair of blue 
eyes, bordered with a delicate crimson, and a mouth of 
so genuine a carmine that the color had been actually 
knoAvn to rub off. Before the ceremony, she fainted 
three times, but was restored through sympathy Avith 
the bridegroom, who went out to " see a man," and re- 
turned looking as if he had found him. 

Mr. Wiggins was the embodiment of imperial splendor. 
He had traveled. He had sailed up and down the Dead 
Sea until some of his intimates called him a dead beat, 
— a flattering epithet he modestly rejected. He had 
been in the interior of Africa, and had traveled under 



Jenkinsism in the Metropolis. 513 

the guidance of some of the natives farther into New- 
Jersey than any civilized person had ever before pene- 
trated. He had explored the sources of the Nile, the 
Hackensack, and Schiedam Schnapps. He was a man 
of nerve and a gymnast. He had wrestled with the 
decanter ; and had been thrown again and again ; but he 
had always returned to the charge, though it was often 
as high as fifty cents. 

Mr. Wiggins's cosmopolitan experiences had taught 
him to disregard the conventional forms of dress. On 
the occasion, he discarded black, except a black eye, 
which he had contracted the night before, in endeavor- 
ing to investigate too closely the kind of wood of which 
a policeman's mace was made. He had on a green coat 
(bottle green), with copper buttons, a scarlet vest, 
blending beautifully with his complexion, and pants of 
profound azure, assimilating with his next morning 
moods. He wore a hollyhock in his button-hole, and 
his nose was arrayed in deep purple. 

Asked by the Rev. Dr. Bumfoozle if he would accept 
Sophronia for his wedded wife, Mr. Wiggins exclaimed, 
in very musical tones, ^' You bet ;'' and invited the 
clergyman out to drink. When the couple were pro- 
nounced man and lady, the organ pealed, which shocked 
the sensitive bride, who could not bear tones, to such a 
degree, that she said, " Take me to my ma." 

The tune was changed at once, and Offenbach's '^•'0, 
landlord, fill the flowing bowl!" substituted. That so 
exhilarated Mr. Wiggins, that he showed his apprecia- 
tion of the music by having a first-class attack of deli- 
rium tremens, Avhich the elegant company applauded to 
the echo. 

The bride said, " Dear Wig, do it again ! It's really 
33 



514 The Great Metropolis. 

splendid, you shake beautifully, and when you cry out, 
* Look at the snakes in my boots !' I forget for the 
moment you have on pumps." Mr. Wiggins declined 
to res2:)ond to the encore^ but offered to read one of 
Tupper's poems instead, which was not accepted. The 
organ then performed a pot-pourri from Belladonna, 
■while the chief vocalist of the choir sang a solo — so low 
no one could hear it — and Herr Limberger, a relative 
of the Bier family, performed an obligate on the bass 
drum. 

An affidavit was now made that the ceremony was 
over. The bridegroom danced a clog dance, and having 
gone to see several more men, he was carried home on a 
shutter, — a paper prepared for the Historical Society 
being read over his prostrate form, with such happy ef- 
fect that he had only two more attacks of del. trem. en 
route to the bride's father's palatial residence. 

Among the distinguished guests present we noticed 
Darius Alexander Jones, Esq., who led the German last 
winter — off the dock, and had to pay his funeral ex- 
penses. P. Berwick Dexter, Esq., known to the scien- 
tific world as having assisted in making most of the 
artesian wells in the country, and recently engaged in 
conducting the operations of the Hoosac tunnel. His 
ancestors died at Potter's Field, and he is a direct de- 
scendant of the ancient augurs. 

Col. Charles Augustus Wisha washy, who was one of 
the first gentlemen that ever led a little dog with a rib- 
bon down the Avenue, and who can distinguish guipure 
lace from Valenciennes with his eyes shut and his coat 
off. 

Hon. Paul Jeunechien, who has received the endearing 
name of " puppy" from his fashionable lady friends, and 



Jenkinsism in the Metropolis. 515 

who has the smallest foot, considering the size of the 
boot he wears, of any bezique player in Poodle Place. 

Dr. George Lancet, whose fondness for horses induced 
him to abandon the lucrative profession of borrowing 
money when no one would loan him any more, and turn 
his time and talent to the diseases of equine quadrupeds. 
In the choicest circles he is familiarly known as " Old 
Vet ;" but is in no manner related to the contributor of 
the Times. 

After the w^edding, a reception was given at the man- 
sion of the bride's father. During the evening, a num- 
ber of the gentlemen ate Sweitzer cheese for the cham- 
pionship of America, and closed the hospitalities of the 
delightful occasion by sleeping in the station-house. 
The affair was one that will long be remembered by the 
persons who furnished the feast and can't collect their 
bills, and by the courteous policemen who assisted at 
the denouement. 

Here Jenkins's account ends. What could be more 
magnificent ? 



CHAPTER LYIII. 

FASHIONABLE WEDDINGS, 

The great social sensation of this City is a wedding. 
Beyond that, fashion does not look, and society has no 
ambition. In ftishionable circles a daughter is merely 
something to get married. From the moment of her 
birth until her name is changed, her mother and femi- 
nine friends give most of their serious thought to her 
establishment in life, which means the securing of a 
husband whose income is large, and whose allowance 
will be prodigal. A rich and liberal husband is the one 
thing needful, the sole object desirable. Having him, 
all is had, and the future loses its significance. 

Marriage means much in all cities ; but in New-York 
it means every thing. A stranger can form no idea of 
the overwhelming importance attached to wedlock in 
the Metropolis, — not to the fitness or sympathy of the 
life-contracting parties, but to the forms and ceremonies 
of the occasion, the bridesmaids, the surroundings, the 
trousseau, the presents, the gilded entourage. 

In society, no one asks, " Is he good-hearted ? Is 
he chivalrous ? Is he intellectual ? Is she fine ? Is 
she cultivated ?" Those are foolish, not to say imperti- 
nent, questions. 

The essential things to know are : Has she style ? 
To what set does she belong ? What are her diamonds 



i 



Fashionable Weddings. 517 

worth ? What time can his horse make ? What club 
is he a member of? How much money is he worth ? 
These questions having been answered satisf\ictorily, 
the sacrifice can proceed. 

New-York has its wedding-season as it has its racing- 
season, its yachting-season, its picnic-season. The 
wedding-season is usually from the latter part of Octo- 
ber to the close of May, the warm months being deemed 
unftiYorable for modish nuptials. Love is declared to 
be impatient; but love has so little to do with most of 
our fashionable weddings, that there is no need of 
haste. 

Such weddings are really what the French would call 
marriages of convenience, though they are found in 
most cases to be the very opposite. They are entered 
upon with all the deliberation with which the demon- 
stration of a theorem is accompanied. They are cold- 
blooded calculations, determinations for vulgar display, 
meretricious shows from beginning to end. There is 
slender opportunity or desire for election in them. 
They are often brought about by others, on whom the 
responsibility of the inharmonious and unhappy unions 
ought to rest; managed, directed, and accomplished by 
and through ambitious mothers and their thoroughly 
disciplined daughters. 

Men, who are presumed to be the seekers and the de- 
terminers of their matrimonial destiny, are seldom con- 
sulted. They are drawn into a flirtation, which con- 
tinues so long that, before they are aware of their 
danger, they find themselves engaged to Margaret or 
Matilda, who was the last woman they thought of 
taking for a wife. They are in no peril, unless any 
are wealthy or believed to be so. 



518 The Great Metropolis. 

The proverb says, The traveler with an empty purse 
laughs at robbers. So here the man of society without 
income is safe in the hands of match-makers. For him 
no traps are laid; no schemes are formed. lie enjoys 
the reputation of a not-marrying man, for the reason 
that in his set no one wants to marry him. He is a 
fortunate fellow. He sees the spectacle without paying 
for it ; shares the pleasure, and escapes the pain. 

Women of a certain age tend to match-making ; and, 
when they have daughters, match-making becomes a 
religious duty. When mamma's eldest girl has quitted 
school, and formally "come out" — an event usually 
celebrated by a party, to which all eligible young men 
are invited — the first thing is to provide her with a 
husband. The claims of the men entitled to considera- 
tion by reason of their incomes are discussed by mamma 
and such other feminine friends as have daughters to 
marry, or as have shown proficiency in disposing of 
them to the highest bidder. If the requisite knowledge 
be lacking to determine a choice, inquiry is made of com- 
petent authorities, and the needed information is at last 
obtained. 

The means or expectations of the half-dozen prospect- 
ive Benedicts having become known with sufficient 
accuracy, a programme is arranged for their entertain- 
ment. Margaret or Matilda is thrown in their way, and 
enjoined to render herself agreeable to any of the 
selected victims. She must humor them; be coy or 
bold ; melting or insensible ; romantic or reasonable, — 
as any one of them demands. 

She must be certain to ascertain the particular vanity 
of the predestined husbands, and flatter that to the 
fullest. 



Fashionable Weddings. 519 

If Charles fancies himself handsome, he must be 
adroitly told of his beauty every day. 

If William prides himself upon his clothes, his taste 
in dress must be commended, and his extravagance 
caressingly censured. 

If Robert have an ambition to be thought profligate, 
mamma must lecture him on his wicked ways, but so 
tenderly that he will feel that bad morals are attractive; 
\vhile the daughter must deplore the fact that women 
all love rakes, and will to the end of time. 

If Joseph plumes himself on his business talent, his 
views must be shared and his sagacity applauded. 

If George has a passion for horses, all his opinions 
about the turf and blooded stock must be listened to 
with patience. 

Margaret or Matilda experiments upon each of the 
sex ; and he who reveals most susceptibility is marked 
and doomed. One after another is dropped as he shows 
resistance or unmanageableness. He who is resolved 
upon is surrounded, attacked on every side, and at last 
compelled, from his desperate condition, to surrender. 
He may look woeful over his defeat; but while he is 
wondering at his novel situation, mamma sweeps in and 
congratulates him upon his acceptance, and the rare good 
fortune which he is too dazed to appreciate as he ought 
The happy day is fixed. The invitations are given to 
the wedding on Gimbrede's latest style of cards ; and for 
many weeks Margaret or Matilda's friends, especially 
the bridesmaids, are all in a flutter about what they 
shaU wear, and how they shall look — the poles of anxi- 
ety in a fashionable woman's being. Before the wed- 
ding, every effort is made to get paragraphs into one of 
the gossiping journals, reading, "A charming Fifth ave- 



520 The Great Metropolis. 

nue belle is soon to be led to the altar by a prominent 
member of the stock board ;" or, "The approaching mar- 
riage of a Twenty-third street beauty, who was greatly 
admired in Paris last season, is- creating a sensation in 
fashionable circles." 

The wedding takes place in a fashionable church, at 
noon — that is the appointed hour — and, the fact having 
been advertised in all the papers that will print it, a 
vast crowd is assembled to see the carriages Avith liv- 
eried servants drive up and deliver their human freight 
of perfumed satin and orange-flowers, black broadcloth 
and white kids, rare diamonds and elaborate hair-dress- 
jng, upon the carpeted w^ay leading to the altar. 

The service is imposing so far as clothes can make it; 
but it is soon over, and the wedded pair, with all their 
showy attendants, go back to the carriages, amid con- 
gratulations that seem funereal, and return to the bride's 
father's house. There the guests are bidden ; delicate 
and rich food is eaten ; costly wine drank ; common- 
place observations exchanged ; criticisms passed upon 
the bride and bridegroom ; presents given (it often hap- 
pens that they are hired, and merely exhibited in the 
drawing-room) ; and every thing done that can be to 
render the occasion expensive and vulgarly pretentious. 
All persons are bound to say the bride looks beautiful 
and interesting, and that the bridegroom conducts him- 
self admirably, very much as if he had been leading a 
forlorn hope to battle. 

After the proper amount of inanity, and compliment, 
and dissipation, the affair is over, and the couple go off 
traveling, as if they had done something they were 
ashamed of, and wanted to hide themselves until their 
confusion had passed. 



Fashionable Weddings. 521 

The day after the wedding, the gossiping journals 
give long and fulsome descriptions of " the event in 
fashionable society ;" state what all the women wore ; 
declare that they all looked lovely, and were perfectly 
fascinating; closing with a minute description of their 
wardrobe which no one but a mantua-maker can under- 
stand. 

This is the end of Mr. and Mrs. Fleetfast. No one 
cares for them any longer. Even the council of mam- 
mas congratulates itself upon having made another 
match, and turns to new fields of commercial enterprise. 
When the wedded couple have passed their honey- 
moon — sometimes before — Mr. Fleetfast returns to his 
billiards, his old and his former rapid companions ; stays 
out until three or four in the morning; comes home 
with a limber right-leg and a peculiar tone in his voice. 
Mrs. Fleetfast is anxious and pale for awhile, and her 
eyes look red and swollen at breakfast. But she soon 
learns from mamma that all men of the world act like 
her husband, and that there is no need of a heart-break 
over what is to be expected. So the delicate little lady 
puts on rouge ; studies the art of flirtation ; and soon 
learns it so well that her acquaintances believe she does 
not care a fig about Mr. Fleetfast's irregularities. 

How many Mr. and Mrs. Fleetfasts there are in New- 
York to-day, and will be any day in the future! 

To a fashionable wedding three things are essential — 
Delmonico's, cash, and Isaac H. Brown. The last is 
the far-famed sexton of Grace Church, who for twenty 
or thirty years has been an authority in society, and 
claims to know the antecedents of all the families in the 
City that have any pretense to gentility. How the 
fat old gabbler ever contrived to make himself a power 



522 ' The Great Metropolis. 

in fashionable circles is past finding out; but that he 
has done so there is no doubt. He is deemed indispen« 
sable on all grand occasions, and the invitations are 
alwa^^s intrusted to him. He revels in weddings, and 
is a necessary evil to the whole tribe of Jenkinses. He 
believes no lady of the town can be properly and modish- 
ly disposed of without his assistance, and he is officious, 
and self-important, and garrulous .enough to please an 
army of silly women. To Brown, Grace Church is 
merely an architectural appendage in which he airs his 
flesh on Sunday, and punishes his spirit on week-days. 

He has presided at thousands of weddings, and has 
lived to see many of them result as unhappily as the 
bitterest cynic could desire. If he would unfold his 
observations, he would tell sad stories of diamond wed- 
dings that proved nothing but paste ; of sparkling eyes, 
and lips with soft music on them, which lost their 
luster through care, and waxed pale through wretch- 
edness untold. 

Fashionable weddings are growing more fashionable, 
and meretricious every year in New-York. They are 
mockeries of love, satires on marriage, insults to nature. 
They who make them assume a responsibility that is 
dreadful, and pay the penalty violated sympathies, and 
false vows, and starved souls sooner or later exact from 
all that give hands without the consecration of hearts. 



CHAPTER LIX. 
CITY MISSIONS. 

Aladdin's palace in the place of a muck-heap could 
hardly be a greater change than the Five Points Mis- 
sion on the site of the Old Brewery, for many years 
the purj^le plague-spot that revealed the fatal moral pes- 
tilence of the Sixth Ward. 

The Five Points is bad enough now, Heaven knows, 
but compared to what it was twenty years ago, when 
Murderer's Alley and Cow Bay were shuddering hor- 
rors, and when subterranean passages communicated 
between pits of debauchery and dens of crime, it is an 
abode of purity and peace. 

The Mission is a plain brick building in Park street, 
near Baxter, the front part of which is rented to tenants. 
It contradicts all its surroundings ; looks as if it had got- 
ten there by mistake, or would look so, if it were not kept 
in countenance by its sober, comfortable companion, the 
House of Industry, over the way. It has one or two 
offices, several school-rooms, and a chapel, all plain, but 
scrupulously clean. 

The Mission was the pioneer of reform in that repul- 
sive locality, having been established in 1850. It is 
under the direction of the Methodists, but the services 
there, though doctrinal, are not sectarian. Rev. L. M. 
Pease was the founder of the Mission, which was at first 



524 The Great Metropolis. 

deemed a quixotic enterprise, and indeed it seemed 
such ; for philanthropists and reformers had surrendered 
all hope of introducing light into that benighted region. 
In a few months an astounding change was apparent, 
and such beneficial results were wrought as the most 
sanguine had not anticipated. The noble effort blos- 
somed with good fruit, and richly repaid those who had 
made it. After two years the reverend superintendent 
retired, and founded the House of Industry. Since 
then both have continued to flourish, and produced the 
most beneficial results. 

The Mission is simply a school. The children there 
have parents usually — in that respect they are different 
from those of the House of Industry and the Boys' and 
Girls' Lodging House — and seem on the whole more intel- 
ligent and of a finer organization than in most of the 
charitable institutions in the City. The Mission has 
eight or ten teachers, all women, paid regular salaries 
by the Board of Education, and five orsix hundred pupils 
on an average, who, during the Winter, are increased 
to eight hundred. The institution, like most of the 
municipal charities, is supported wholly by voluntary 
contributions. Rev. J. N. Shaffer is the superintendent, 
and gives his entire time to its management. As usual, 
all the children are of foreign parentage, Irish predomi- 
nating, and Germans next. Every Tuesday evening 
and Sunday, interesting religious exercises are held in the 
chapel. A large infant school is taught in the Mission, 
and is one of its most attractive features. Every day 
visitors go there, and rarely depart without seeing and 
feeling the necessity and advantage of such a charity. 

The House of Industry is fifteen years old, and 
has long been under the superintendence of S. B. 



City Missions 525 

Ilalliday. It is a plain building, much like the Mission ; 
has an ofBce, school-rooms, dormitories, a chapel, wash- 
ing rooms, and whatever is needful for the purpose. 
About two hundred children are generally in the 
House, though the number is greater in cold weather. 
During the past year 1,075 children were admitted; 
512 were sent to situations; 179 returned to parents; 
58 sent to other institutions ; 275 left voluntarily; 17 
expelled for misconduct; 19 ran away, and 5 died. 
The average attendance was 413, which is larger than 
during any previous year. The teachers are nine in 
number, and very energetic and conscientious in the dis- 
charge of their duty. The Sunday-school has twenty 
teachers, with an average attendance of 350 pupils. 
The religious progress has not been so great as is desir- 
able, but still it is encouraging. The number of meals 
given during the year was 385,502. It often happens 
that two or three hundred men and women apply daily 
for food, and are given an inexpensive but substantial 
dinner, which does not cost more than four cents for 
each person. 

Many thousand garments are made and repaired every 
year, and some ten thousand articles of clothing are 
given to the children and out-door poor. The shoe-shop 
is excellently managed, hundreds of shoes being made 
wearable from old ones that seem entirely worthless. 
The nurseiy usually contains twenty to twenty-five lit- 
tle ones, from eighteen months to six years of age. The 
difference between the children when they are first 
received and after they have been there a short time is 
remarkable. They are converted from squalid, ragged, 
pallid little wretches to clean, well-clad, wholesome 
creatures. Gradually their old, sad, hard look wears 



526 The Great Metropolis. 

away. The light begins to dawn in their faces, as if 
from redeemed souls. 

The expenses of the House were, for the year, 
$32,114.94, and the donations $33,568.27. 

The Howard Mission, or Home for Little Wanderers, 
is at No. 40 New Bowery. Over the gateway that leads 
to the institution is the name of the Mission, and under 
it are the words, " Homes for the homeless, and bread 
for the hungry." 

The Mission is under the direction of Rev. W. C. 
Van Meter ; has large and well-ventilated school-rooms 
and chapels, and is excellently conducted. It is regu- 
larly incorporated ; not sectarian ; never turns a child 
from its doors, and is entirely sustained by voluntary 
contributions, receiving no aid from the Legislature, 
City, or School Fund. In six years it received 7,581 
children, and the number taught, fed and clothed during 
a month is about 500. The day school is from 9 to 2, 
and the several exercises from 1|^ to 2 o'clock. Prayer 
meetings are held every Tuesday evening, and regular 
devotional exercises on Sunday. 

The Howard Mission is one of the best of our chari- 
ties, and is an object of curiosity and interest to many 
strangers and citizens. The little wanderers are very 
kindly and even tenderly treated, and no one who visits 
them often can fail to be concerned in their develop- 
ment — physical, mental, and moral. They are very sen- 
sitive to kindness, and show, as all animated nature 
does, that love is the best teacher and the truest reli- 
gion. 

The history of each one of the children is known by 
the teachers, and if pubhshed would show the source of 
most of our social evils. The little creatures are suffer- 



City Missions. 527 

ing for the sins of their ancestors, and the chief sin is 
intemperance. From intemperance come nearly all the 
others — idleness, dishonesty, incontinence, selfishness, 
and brutality, and with them theft, violence, murder, 
and every other species of crime. Hardly one of the 
little wanderers and outcasts that has not, or had not, 
drunken parents. Generally the father is dissipated ; 
often both the father and mother. 

I have heard the antecedents of the children related. 
One had a father and a mother who probably inherited 
their thirst for liquor from their parents. The father 
died of delirium tremens ; the mother fell from the win- 
dow of a tenement and broke her neck. A second was 
found nearly naked in the street, where it had been left 
to die of exposure. A third had a father who murdered 
his wife, and Avas executed for the crime. A fourth was 
rescued from the flames of a building fired by a drunken 
maniac. A fifth was left an orphan by the death of its 
mother from typhus, and the suicide of its father while 
Biad with delirium tremens. A sixth has parents, but 
they are always on Blackwell's Island or at Sing Sing, 
and have no more care or thought of their wretched 
offspring than if they had never been born. A seventh 
has a decrepit mother in the hospital, and had a father 
who was shot in a Water street brawl. 

Everywhere the same story is told. The trail of the 
rum shop is over them all. No wonder persons, con- 
scientious and philanthropic, favor compulsory measures 
for the abolition of intemperance. It is the cryhig 
curse, the besetting sin of this and every other land. 
Destroy intemperance, and the World would be more 
than half reformed. 



CHAPTER LX. 

THE TOMBS 

Everybody in the Metropolis has seen the Tombs, 
as the City Prison is always called here, but few have 
been inside of its gloomy walls ; nor would they like to 
be, if they knew what wretches and wretchedness it 
contained. 

The Tombs occupies one square, or block, bounded 
on the east and west by Centre and Elm, and nortn 
and south by Leonard and Franklin streets. It was 
built about thirty years ago, of gray granite, in the 
Egyptian style of architecture, at a cost of $250,000 ; 
and it is safe to say no such amount of money was ever 
expended for a more dolorous purpose. Its gloomy 
semblance gave it the name it still bears, and will bear 
while one block of the dingy stone stands upon 
another. 

When the prison was built, it was considered a 
remarkable structure, — which, indeed, it is; and, for 
years, it was the architectural wonder of the east side 
of the town. The vicinity of the Tombs has little to 
boast of now in the way either of cleanliness or beauty ; 
but, at the time of its erection, squalor and sin reigned 
supreme thereabout, and the prison might well be con- 
sidered the tomb of purity, order, peace, and law. 

The gray, begrimed building one sees in passing 



The Tombs. 529 

through the streets is merely the walls of the prison, 
inclosing a quadrangle full of narrow, ill-ventilated, 
dismal cells, arranged in rows one above another, and 
reached by iron steps and galleries. There are three 
different departments in the Tombs, — one for boys, 
another for men, and a third for women ; and the three 
classes are kept carefully apart. They are all misera- 
ble enough, Heaven knows ! and no sympathetic person 
who goes there can withhold his pity from them, how- 
ever hard, or vicious, or degraded they may be. 

The Tombs is a prison of detention, for the most 
part; persons being confined there for trial, and sen- 
tenced to Blackwell's Island or Sing Sing when 
convicted. The prisoners are locked up in their cells 
during the night and much of the day, but are permit- 
ted to take exercise, and go through the farce of getting 
^' fresh air," in the galleries at certain hours. " Fresh 
air," indeed ! The atmosphere of the Tombs is as 
vicious materially as it is morally. It is foul, even 
poisonous, and enough to breed a pestilence. The 
Board of Health long ago declared the prison a 
nuisance, and all who visit it think it should be abated, 
as such. But the voice of justice and reform is seldom 
obeyed in large cities, where selfishness is the end and 
corruption is the rule. 

The inmates vary in number with the season and the 
condition of business. When the weather is cold and 
trade is stagnant, there are more than during the warm 
months and periods of activity ; showing that crime is 
the result of temptation and necessity. Usually, the 
Tombs has about 400 inmates, three-quarters of whom 
are men. Most of them are hardened and degraded 
creatures, who have been there, at the Island, and ia 

34 



530 The Great Metropolis. 

the penitentiary, again and again. They have lost all 
sense of shame ; for they feel they are outcasts ; that 
no one cares for them; that no one will help them to 
reform. They come into contact only with their own 
fallen kind, and with policemen who are as callous in 
their way as the prisoners are in theirs. 

If we could but look into the hearts of criminals, 
could fathom the mysteries of vice, would we not find 
that the divorce of the erring from human charity, their 
despair of human forgiveness and love, was the cause 
of most of their so-called sins ? 

Not a few of the prisoners are slight offenders, 
novices in vice, — men who have become intoxicated, 
perhaps for the first time, and who awake from a mad 
delirium to mortification and bitter repentance in the 
ghastly cells of the Tombs. 

Men of influence, and wealth, and position, have been 
there more than once, particularly strangers, who come 
to the City to see its sights, and, after drinking and 
dissipating, have been borne down by the fiery draughts 
they had swallowed. Printers and reporters, I am 
sorry to say, are occasionally found at the Tombs, 
ending a spree there most gloomily, when they set 
out for a night of gayety and pleasure. 

The Tombs has a history, and a very sad one. It 
has seen tragedies whose horrors thrilled through the 
land, and were repeated with pale lips for many 
months, and are now remembered only as dim traditions. 
Men have spent terrible days and nights there, with 
death, for which they were wholly unprepared, staring 
them in the face from the gallows' beam. What ghostly 
visions of murdered victims have trooped through those 
cells ! What agony and terror have wrung their souls I 



The Tombs. 631 

Men have destroyed themselves within those pitiless 
walls ; and eternal farewells have been taken from 
friends, and wives, and mistresses, who loved none 
the less for the great crimes that had extinguished 
the sympathy of outraged society. 

Col. Monroe Edwards, the famous forger, — scarcely 
remembered by this generation, — occupied one of the 
Cells. Cancemi, the assassin; Mrs. Burdell-Cunning- 
ham ; Baker, the murderer of " Bill" Poole, — were there. 
And Colt, who slew Adams the printer, and afterward 
stabbed himself to the heart, was found stiff and stark 
on the very morning named for his execution. The 
story of the mysterious murder — the sending of the 
box containing the body to New Orleans, its discovery, 
the arrest, the exciting trial, the effort of influential 
friends to save him, the romantic attachment of his 
mistress, and then the final cheating of the gallows — 
was long remembered, with all the wild rumors of his 
escape by the substitution of another body for his, and 
his living in prosperity in Europe. 

One might write a volume of the tragedies of the 
Tombs, and to-day they would be almost as fresh as when 
they first startled the City and the country at large. 

The gallows has stood a score of times within the 
walls of the Tombs, and the timbers of which it is com- 
posed are carefully laid by, to be put up whenever the 
shuddering spectacle of judicial murder shall again be 
presented. Who, that has heard the hollow echoes of 
gallows-making, on some sepulchral morning before sun- 
rise, will ever forget the awful sound ? What morbid 
curiosity is always felt by the depraved to witness 
executions ! How all the house-tops in the gloomy 
square have been blackened, and will be blackened once 



532 The Great Metropolis. 

more when some trembling wretch is swung off into 
eternity ! 

The courts held in the Tombs are the police court, 
presided over by Justice Dowling, an officer worthy of the 
revolting place ; and the special sessions, where petty 
offenses in the eyes of the law are tried, and humanity 
held up to merciless judgment. 

The atmosphere of police courts is always sickening, 
and that of the Tombs unusually so. I feel contami- 
nated whenever I enter Bowling's tribunal. Every thing 
seems so hard, so vulgar, so pitiless, that I long for the 
sunshine of Broadway, the fresh breeze of the parks, as 
if I had been deprived of them for months. The police 
strike me as unpleasantly as the criminals ; for familiar- 
ity has made them callous, and they laugh and jeer at 
degradation which is revolting, and at misery which is 
too deep for tears. 

The tragedies of the wretched creatures that have 
fallen into their hands, are broad farces to them. The 
judge sentences the culprits as he would call off a list of 
articles at an auction. The officers of the law give evi- 
dence under oath as they relate a coarse story at head- 
quarters. Crime is a matter of course — punishment an 
inevitable duty. All wickedness and infamy belong to 
the daily routine, and are neither to be censured nor 
deplored. 

Oh, the pain and shame of the police court ! It is a 
tribunal without dignity, and a sentence without sym- 
pathy. It seems to rob justice of all beauty by its 
coarseness, and to strike humanity into the dust with a 
brutal hand. It has its uses, I suppose, but they are 
the uses of adversity deprived of aspiration, and cut off 
from the hope of improvement. 



The Tombs. 533 

I have gone into the Tombs and talked with the pris- 
oners, and I have known others to do so. If you are 
gentle and sympathetic, they respect you at once ; and 
no wonder, for they have no reason to look for kind- 
ness, from their past experience. But even they will 
show the better side that every mortal has, if you will 
persevere, and prove to them you are their friend. 
Charity not only covers a multitude of sins ; it turns 
them back to the source of good intentions, and enables 
us to judge as we would be judged. 

The men are not so pitiable as the boys and women ; 
for these might be reformed by proper treatment. 
But, in the atmosphere of the Tombs, reformation seems 
impossible. The grim, hard stone of the building ap- 
pears to mock every effort to change ; its dreary echoes 
to laugh at every sigh, or moan, or prayer. 

The Tombs ! It is well named. Who so christened it, 
was wiser and bitterer than he knew. In it are swal- 
lowed up the best purposes and resolves ; and its pon- 
derous architecture crushes any remaining instinct to 
good. 

When I pass it under the lightness of noon, I feel a 
shadow in my way ; and even the purity of the moon 
seems stained when its beams fall upon such hideous 
ugliness. 

Sunday, at the Tombs, is the grand gala day of trans- 
gression and judgment. On that day the police court 
presents a more revolting spectacle than on any other 
day of the week; for the crowd is greater, and the 
offenses are more repulsive. Saturday has long been 
known as the drunkards' night ; for then that vast class 
of people in great cities who live from hand to mouth, — 
from the rum-shop to the poor-house, it might be stated — • 



634 The Great Metropolis. 

who seek relaxation from exhausting toil in degrading 
dissipation, — give loose to their passions, and fall into 
the clutches of the police. 

Often a hundred and more cases of drunkenness, row- 
dyism, fighting, and Avife-beating, are disposed of on 
Sunday morning by Justice Dowling, at the rate of one 
or two per minute. The blackened and bloodshot eyes, 
bloody and bloated faces, ragged and quivering forms, 
repulsive fojitures, mis-shapen by generations of wrong- 
doing, will haunt you long after your visit to the court. 

Religious exercises are held there, too. Religion in 
such a place is like peace in Pandemonium. The exer- 
cises are a ghastly satire on the spirit of Christianity ; 
for, while the form is observed, the soul of humanity is 
crushed. The Sisters of Charity — truly such at all 
times — have charge of the boys and women, and, by 
their earnestness, lend a little halo to the place ; but the 
Protestant worship, progressing amid the trials, and 
intermingling with clamor and coarseness, seems to 
deepen the shadow of the ever-shadowed Tombs. 



CHAPTER LXI. 

THE MIDNIGHT MISSION. 

Society seems from its organization to have taught 
that all sins are pardonable in men, and that all errors 
but one may be forgiven in women. Inhuman and bane- 
ful as this belief has been, it has been practically held, 
and has, generation after generation, removed fallen 
women from the possibility of reform. 

Whatever else this age may be, it is certainly an age 
of humanity, and for it was fitly reserved the dealing 
with the great social problem in a thoroughly human 
way. The great reformatory movement for women, 
most justly styled unfortunate, was originated by Mrs. 
Emma Sheppard, of Frome, England, who began her 
great and good work in 1855. She first visited her 
erring sisters in what was known as the " black ward " 
of the work-house ; afterward in the penitentiaries of 
Bath, Cleves and Pentonville, and labored constantly 
and conscientiously for the reclamation of those whom 
society had cast out, and even the Church would not 
receive. 

Four years she devoted to the excellent work with 
excellent results, and then had the courage to open her 
own home to the shelter and protection of the poor 
pariahs. Her undertaking produced good fruit, and in 
the winter of 1860 the ^'midnight meeting movement" 



536 The Great Metropolis. 

■was begun. It was soon extended to other cities of 
Great Britain, and to this country and City in 1867. 

The founders of the Midnight Mission here were ten 
in number, seven men and three women, representing 
commerce, medicine, and the pulpit, and had their first 
regular meeting on the first of February, in rooms at the 
corner of Twelfth street and Broadway. Public opinion, 
always slow and rarely enlightened, was opposed to the 
movement, and some of the churches were bitter in their 
hostility, repeating the old cant that such a charity 
would do more harm than good ; that it was not prac- 
ticable, and that sympathy with lewdness would increase 
it by making it attractive. 

Money was wanting, too ; but the members of the 
Mission were so resolute, so active, that the work ad- 
vanced in spite of drawbacks, and steadily gained the 
confidence of the community. At the end of the first 
year the members were quadrupled, and the rooms in 
Broadway were found too small. The Mission removed 
to a large dwelling, No. 23 Amity street, where it still 
remains. The new house is plain, but very neat and 
comfortable, and under the direction of a kind and en- 
tirely sympathetic woman. 

Two nights of every week — Thursday and Friday — 
are devoted to the cause which is advertised by printed 
cards that read : — 

" The Committee of the Midnight Mission Avill be 
happy to see you at tea at 10 o'clock on any Friday 
evening at 23 Amity street, between Greene and Mer- 
cer. Rooms open every day, from 2 to 4 p. m., for 
private conversation and friendly advice." 

The cards are distributed among the unfortunate 
women wherever found, in the street, at the dance-houses, 



The Midnight Mission. 537 

at the bagnios. On the nights named men of years, 
benevolence, and high social standing, go out into the 
highways and byways of the City, and gently but earn- 
estly invite the poor wanderers to the Mission. They 
are not often rebuffed, for the quick instincts of the 
women reveals to them at once that the good men are 
really their friends. They do not tire of their under- 
taking. No ill temper, no insult repels them. They 
are always gentle, tender, entreating, and prove that to 
the expression of genuine sympathy the sternest nature 
yields. 

The evening receptions are on Friday. The noble 
women who belong to the Mission prepare simple refresh- 
ments, and receive the unfortunates who come volun- 
tarily, or whom the members find in their search. The 
poor girls are usually very shy and timid at first, but 
they soon gain confidence from the loving kindness of 
the ladies of the committee. They are encouraged to 
unburden their breasts, to tell their sad stories, and to 
enter upon a new path of life. After refreshments come 
devotional exercises, which close with a hymn and 
prayer, in which all are urged to take part. No one, 
whatever his religious opinions, can attend the recep- 
tions without being touched by what he sees and hears 
there. He can not fail to perceive the work is good, and 
that such a work is blessed indeed. 

The unfortunates who visit the Mission are from six- 
teen to twenty-five years of age, and the number is di- 
vided about equally between foreigners and Americans. 
Many of them are pretty, but few are educated. 

The greater part of the Americans are from the 
country, having fallen victims to the temptations and 
wickedness of the great City. 



538 The Great Metropolis. 

Nearly all make the same sad confession. They have 
sinned from love — strange paradox ! — having been be- 
trayed by the man they trusted, and having taken one 
false step, they could not retrace it. Once fallen, the 
brand of shame was fixed upon their brow, and they 
were sent forth to the avoidance and the scorn of the 
World. Many of them are afraid to return to their 
relatives or friends after their seduction, and many are 
spurned as loathsome creatures by those who, in the 
crisis of their lives, should stand between them and 
their fighting souls. Having placed their foot upon the 
plowshare, they can hardly escape the terrible ordeal. 
The way of their downward course is deftly paved. 
They steadily descend, as by a winding staircase, and 
every year, and month, and week, and day, they look 
back to less loathsome heights they never can regain. 

" God help us !" they may well say ; for Man abandons 
them to their remorseless fate. The houses of prostitu- 
tion are regularly graded. No sooner does one expel 
them than another takes them up. They are in a great 
moral maelstrom. In vain they struggle : in vain they 
stretch forth their pleading hands. Round, round, down, 
down they go until they are swallowed up in death, and 
not even Heaven seems to hear their despairing cry. 

Nearly every one of the poor girls says she had lost 
all hope ; that she had no faith in the sympathy or pity 
of her kind ; that the humanity of the Mission surprises 
and bewilders her. 

When we remember that there are twenty to twenty- 
five thousand courtesans in New-York, the capacity 
for good there is in such an organization as the Mid- 
night Mission can easily be perceived. If they fail to 
reform, it is because they don't know how. They stum- 



The Midnight Mission. 639 

ble in the thick darkness, and beg in vain for the smallest 
glimmer of light. 

Tlie severe censors who declare that fallen women 
can't and won't be lifted up should attend the receptions 
of the Mission. During the exercises many a poor girl 
lives her sad life over again ; becomes an innocent child 
once more ; and as the hymns and prayers bring back 
to her memory the days of happiness and home, her lip 
trembles ; her eye moistens ; and all lier soul bursts out 
at last in an agony of sacred and repentant tears. Not 
long since one of the poor outcasts, who went to the 
Mission merely from curiosity, was so overcome by the 
sympathy expressed for her that in the midst of a hymn 
she broke down completely. '*' What a load is lifted 
from my bosom !'' she sobbed out. " My heart feels 
so light. It seems as if I could go up. I haven't been 
so happy since I was at home. I'm so happy I wish I 
could die now. You're all so good to me. I didn't be- 
lieve any one could be but my dear mother. She is dead, 
and 1 T'e often been glad, for she loved me so, and I 
didn't want her to know what a bad girl I was. But now 
I wish she was alive to see that I've changed, and won't 
do wrong any more." 

The repentant girl kept her word. She remained at 
the Mission for some weeks and obtained a situation 
through the Committee ; studied hard, and, being natu- 
rally intelligent, is now teaching a village school in New- 
England ; is a church member j often writes to the good 
women here ; says she is happy all the day long, and 
shall ever be grateful to them for preserving her from 
utter ruin. 

Such an example, were it single, should encourage 
the good work, and strengthen the hands and hearts of 



540 The Great Metropolis. 

those engaged in the enterprise. But the example is 
one of many, and proves that the women who have been 
driven to prostitution can be returned to purity, be made 
useful, noble, Christian. 

The report of the first year shows that during the 
twelve months past eight hundred women attended the 
Friday evening receptions ; that of the number seventy- 
seven were induced to remain (the Mission is now fitted 
up for a temporary home), and that forty-eight of the 
seventy-seven have thoroughly reformed. Of those who 
remained in the Mission fourteen have found virtuous 
homes ; seven have been returned to their friends ; eight 
placed in charitable institutions ; nine have been lost 
sight of; twenty-two have gone back to their old life of 
shame, and seventeen were in the Mission House at the 
close of the year. 

, The expense of the Mission, supported from voluntary 
contributions, was $50,000 during the year — about ^200 
for each woman saved. Surely, salvation is cheap at so 
small a price. The Mission has no Utopian ideas ; has 
no hope of destroying prostitution, or working a general 
reform among the unfortunate. It directs all its efforts 
toward individuals ; opens the way of return to those 
who have wandered; is the means of showing to the 
miserable class that there are good souls in the World 
who will take them by the hand and assist them to live 
virtuous lives. 

The women who visit the Mission are always invited 
to stay. Some remain over night only ; others for days 

*and weeks. Besides assisting in household duties, they 
are provided with sewing, and receive half the proceeds. 
Six hours of the day are occupied in reading, talking, 
and in innocent recreation, of which music forms a part. 



The Midnight Mission. 641 

Many of the Magdalens are very intelligent, and fitted 
for useful positions in life. Though the Mission is in- 
tended only as a temporary asylum, no one of the in- 
mates is ever asked to depart. On the contrary, all are 
encouraged to remain as long as they like. I 

The charity is most noble, and very effective withal. 
While the Mission continue? it will be a beacon-light to 
those who deem themselves lost. It will be a bridge 
connecting virtue with unchastity, over which those who 
wish can pass from darkness to light, from wretchedness 
and sin to peace and purity. It is doing what He did 
who sat beside the fallen woman at the well of Samaria, 
and talked to her lovingly and forgivingly of her duty 
and her destiny. 



CHAPTER LXII. 
THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE POOR. 

One of the wisest, best-managed, and most practical 
charities in the City is the Association for Im2}roving 
the Condition of the Poor, of which James Brown, the 
eminent banker, is President, and Robert B, Minturn, 
the late distinguished merchant, was Treasurer. Its other 
officers, its advisory committees and visitors, are among 
our best citizens, who have for years been laboring for 
the purpose that the name of the organization indicates. 

The Association was organized in 1843, and incorpor- 
ated in 1848, and each year has made it more useful, 
and increased the field of its operations. Every person 
who becomes an annual subscriber, a member of an 
advisory committee, or visitor, shall be a member of the 
Society, which is under the control of a Board of 
Managers. Nine members constitute a quorum at any 
of the meetings, which are held regularly every month 
— July and August excepted — or specially whenever 
deemed necessary. The City is divided 'into twenty- 
two districts, each ward forming a district, and the 
districts are divided into sections. Each district has 
an advisory committee, consisting of five members, and 
each section a visitor. 

The rules for the government of the Association are 
as follows : — 



The Association for the Poor. 543 

To regard each applicant for relief as entitled to 
charity, until a careful examination proves the contrary. 

To give relief only after a personal investigation of 
each case, by visitation and inquiry. 

To relieve no one except through the Visitor of the 
Section in which the applicant lives. 

To give necessary articles, and only what is imme- 
diately necessary. 

To give only in small quantities, and in proportion to 
immediate need ; and of coarser quality than might be 
procured by labor, except in cases of sickness. 

To give assistance at the right moment ; not to pro- 
long it beyond the duration of the necessity which calls 
for it ; but to extend, restrict, and modify relief accord- 
ing to that necessity. 

To require of each beneficiary abstinence from intoxi- 
cating liquors as a drink ; of such as have young children 
of a proper age, that they may be kept at school, unless 
unavoidable circumstances prevent it; and to apprentice 
those of suitable years to some trade, or send them to 
service. The design being to make the poor a party to 
their own improvement and elevation, the willful viola- 
tion or disregard of these rules shall debar them from 
further relief. 

To give no relief to recent immigrants having claims on 
the Commissioners of Emigration, except, in urgent cases, 
for two or three days, or until that Department can be 
informed of such cases, when the responsibility of this 
Association toward them shall cease. 

To give no aid to persons who, from infirmity, imbe- 
cility, old age, or any other cause, are likely to continue 
unable to earn their own support, and consequently to 
be permanently dependent, except in extreme cases for 



544 The Great Metropolis. 

two or three days, or until they can be referred to the 
Commissioners of Charity. 

To discontinue relief to all who manifest a disposition 
to depend on alms, rather than their own exertions, for 
support, and whose further maintenance would be in- 
compatible with their good and the objects of the Insti- 
tution. 

The late census shows that the population of the 
City consists of forty-one nationalities, representing 
every quarter of the Globe, and embracing, necessarily, 
corresponding varieties of race, language, color, habits, 
temperament, moral character, religions, political pro- 
clivities, and occupations. The following is a classifica- 
tion of the inhabitants according to their nativity, as 
gathered from the census of 1865 : — 

American born 407,314 or 56.85 per cent. 

From Ireland 161, .S34 or 22.21 " 

From (ierman States 107.267 or 14.77 " 

From England 19,699 or 2.71 " 

From other foreign countries 30,772 or 3.46 " 

Total 726,386 100 

The foregoing figures show the aggregate of the for- 
eign-born in the City to be 319,074, or 43 15-100 per 
cent, of the population. The statement is accepted, 
though difficult of reconciliation with probability or fact; 
for, as early as 1855, the ratio of the foreign-born was 
51 19-100 per cent., and, as 1,342,965 immigrants landed 
at this port during the ensuing decennial period, it 
appears questionable that their number, meanwhile, 
should have decreased in this City more than 8 per cent. 
Again, according to the census of 1865, the native voters 
were 51,500, and the naturalized, or foreign-born voters, 
77,475, thus giving the latter, though numerically 8 



The Association for the Poor. 545 

per cent, less than the former, 50 per cent, more voters. 
As most of the poor here are foreigners, it may be 
well to state that the native-born, who comprise rather 
more than half the inhabitants, give about twenty-three 
per cent, of the City indigence ; the foreign-born, includ- 
ing those aided by the Commissioners of Emigration, 
amount to seventy-seven per cent., which is nearly four 
imported paupers for one American. Of the 68,873 
persons arrested for offenses against person and prop- 
erty, for the year ending October 31st, 1865, 45,837 
were foreigners; and of these 32,867 were Irish, and 
but 23,036 — white and black, all told — were natives. 
Of the whole number arrested, 13,576 could neither read 
nor write. Many of the native-born paupers and crimi- 
nals are the offspring of foreigners, who were themselves 
paupers and criminals. Hence much of our indigenous 
pauperism and crime is immediately traceable to foreign 
parentage. 

Twenty-five years of experience have tested the effi- 
cacy of the system adopted by the Association in bene- 
fiting the poor. Thousands of our wealthy and gener- 
ous fomilies have found that the cessation of miscella- 
neous almsgiving at their doors and elsewhere, and the 
substitution therefor of the present charity, has not 
only been more effective, but has materially reduced 
able-bodied vagrancy. The members of the society feel 
assured that their plan is the true one, and believe that 
by general co-operation professional mendicancy could 
soon be suppressed. The number of members is stead- 
ily increasing, and is now over twenty-seven hundred. 

The visitors go to every tenement and place of pov- 
erty in their particular section, make personal investi- 
gation of the cases of destitution, and report them to the 

35 



546 The Great Metropolis. 

Association. In no ordinary case is money given, for 
when it is, it is liable to be expended for liquor. The 
Association distributes nothing but food and fuel, and 
that often finds its way to the corner grocery. Tickets 
are used for the purpose. Any member hearing of a 
case of destitution fills the ticket as follows : — 

Mr. JoiiiV Jones, Visitor, No. 48 Stuyvesant street: 

Please visit Patrick Murphy, No. 93 James street. 

Joseph Smith, 
Member N. Y. Association 
For improving tiie Condition of the Poor. 
Residence, 56 Fifteenth street. 

If Mr. Jones finds Patrick Murphy deserving, Mur- 
phy gets a ticket like this, to the grocer, specifying by 
list No. 1 or No. 2 the articles needed : — 

Mr. Geokge Jenkins, 44 Eighteenth street : 

Please let Patrick Murphy have tke value of $1, of list ^N"©. 1. 

John Jones, Visitor. 
October 14, 1868. 

List number one represents food for persons in health, 
number two represents food for persons in sickness. 
The number is written in ink so that it can not be 
readily altered. In this manner the prospect of being 
imposed upon is lessened. 

A statement of the labors of the Association shows 
that in 1844 there were 244 visitors, 10,082 visits were 
made, 1,560 families and 6,240 persons were relieved ; 
$10,522 were received and $8,704 disbursed. Last 
year there were 339 visitors, who made 22,509 visits ; 
5,141 families and 19,097 persons were relieved; 
$57,837 were received and $59,058 disbursed. 

The Association has rooms at No. 39 Bible House, 



J 




CITY MISSIOXAllV 



The Association for the Poor. 647 

and from this, as a radiating center, the visitors go forth 
upon their mission of charity and mercy. The labor of 
the good and humane persons ^vho compose the Society 
is constant, indefatigable and beyond all praise. 

The members are among the best people in the City. 
Fine men and delicate women, in the prosecution of 
benevolence go through the filthiest streets and into the 
most noisome dens ; do every thing in their power to 
feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and ask no 
reward but the precious consciousness of benefiting 
their kind ; thus proving themselves Christians what- 
ever their creed. 



CHAPTEr. LXIIL 
THE WORKING WOMEN'S HOME. 

The high price of living in New-York has borne so 
heavily upon the poor that it has crowded them into 
tenement houses, and compelled them to subsist in the 
most unnatural manner. The numerous women, who 
rarely earn more than about half the "wages of men, 
even when they do men's work, are, and always have 
been, oppressed by the high prices they have been com- 
pelled to pay. 

Any and every boarding-house keeper is prejudiced 
against women ; would much rather have men at the 
same rate ; and does his or her best to avoid taking 
them. One woman is more burdensome, they say-, than 
half a dozen men ; for she is so much in the house, and 
gives so much more trouble than the other sex. Unpro- 
tected young women are exposed to dangers and tempt- 
ations in the tenement houses, and yet they have no 
other place to go. 

To obviate this difficulty, and to provide comfortable 
and healthful quarters for them, the Working Women's 
Home was established in this City about a year ago. 
The idea was borrowed, I believe, from the model lodg- 
ing-houses of Great Britain, which have been of great 
benefit to the laboring classes, and have become popular 
and been reformatory wherever they have been opened. 



The Working Women's Home. 549 

The Home, No. 45 Elizabeth street, near Canal, is a 
large six-story building, formerly a superior tenement 
house, erected originally by several benevolent New- 
Yorkers for colored families. For some reason, the col- 
ored people got crowded out, and persons of the usual 
miscellaneous character obtained possession. The phil- 
anthropic citizens who had the enterprise in charge, 
thinking the locatioji favorable, and knowing the superior 
character of the building, bought it for $100,000, and 
expended $50,000 more to put it in order. They opened 
it as soon as the necessary repairs were made ; the house 
having been cleansed from top to bottom, painted, and 
properly furnished. 

Three months were required to advertise the object 
of the Home, which was for a long while supposed to be 
a charitable institution. When its character was made 
known, it received, in a few weeks, about 100 boarders. 
The number increased, and has been increasing slowly 
but steadily ever since. At present it has 245 boarders 
— many more than it has had at any previous time, — 
and before the Winter is over it will probably have not 
far from 500, for whom there are ample accommoda- 
tions. 

As you enter the house, 3'ou find yourself in a large 
office, presided over by a young woman, who receives 
the money, attends to the register, and performs the 
duties of a clerk in a hotel. She is always at her post ; 
is polite and attentive, and might give valuable lessons 
to men in the same position. Adjoining the office is a 
large parlor and reading-room, divided into three com- 
partments, in the first of which the boarders are privi- 
leged to receive their friends of either sex ; while the 
others are of a more private character. The reading- 



550 The Great Metropolis. 

room has files of the daily papers, with a well-selected 
hut small library, and the parlor contains a piano and 
melodeon. The boarders have music; talk, dance, and 
enjoy themselves until 10 in the evening, when they 
retire. Adjoining the parlor is the dining-room and 
laundry, and in the basement is the kitchen, bakery, 
and bath-rooms. On the second floor are sleeping 
apartments, and also on the third, fourth, fifth, and 
sixth, the apartments opening into a broad and airy hall. 
The halls have such names as Cooper hall, Aspinwall 
and Astor gallery, being christened after the donors of 
the establishment. The beds are ranged side by side, 
and, separated by white curtains, are models of neatness 
and sweetness. Every thing about the house breathes 
the air of order, cleanliness, and comfort, and is deci- 
dedly attractive. The washing is well done, the cooking 
excellent, and the tables look inviting. While every 
thing is plain, it is substantial and satisfactory. On 
the south side of the building is a promenade, where 
the boarders walk and take the air when the weather 
is pleasant. 

When the Home was first opened, the charge for board 
and washing was $3.25 a week, but since then $1.25 has 
been fixed as the rate for lodging and washing, paya- 
ble in advance, the meals being paid for when they are 
had. The $1.25 per week entitles the boarders to all 
the privileges of the house, and the meals, received on 
the European plan, cost them from $1,75 to $3.25 addi- 
tional. They live very well, though the price of their 
meals does not average 20 cents each. 

No restrictions are placed upon the boarders. They 
are admitted until 11 o'clock at night. If they come 
after that hour, they are still let in, but 25 cents extra 



The Working Women's Home. 551 

is charged for the trouble of rising and unlocking the 
door. This is an objectionable regulation that .^hould 
be changed. To guard against improper persons, refer- 
ences as to character are required in all cases. The 
trustees, including some of our best citizens, desire to 
make it a well-regulated Christian home ; but they do 
not attempt to interfere with the opinions or liberty of 
the boarders. Prayers are made every evening, and 
those desirous of assisting at the devotional exercises 
can do so, or absent themselves if they choose. Appli- 
cations for board can be made at any time. It is not 
customary to take women for less time than a week ; 
but the rule is often violated ^vhen there is urgent rea- 
son. Sometimes women go there late at night, and, 
having neither reference nor money, are directed to the 
House of Industry or St. Barnabas. The money is in 
sisted upon, to preserve the dignity and self-respect of 
the boarders, who would not remain if they considered 
themselves objects of charit}^ 

The greater portion of the women are foreigners, but 
many of them Americans. They are generally between 
18 and 35. No restriction is made about their age, 
beyond the fact that they must not be children, or feeble 
or infirm from years. Any neat, healthy, capable woman 
of good character is admissible as a boarder. Many of 
the boarders are not only intelligent, but well educated. 
Bookfolders, hoop-skirt-makers, cloak-makers, artists, stu- 
dents, teachers, and printers are among the number. 
They rise when they please, and go to their duties ; re- 
turning as they like. They can remain in the house if 
so disposed. Indeed, there seem to be no more re- 
straints upon them than there would be at any well- 
regulated hotel. The parlors are always open, and the 



552 The Great Metropolis. 

library is always accessible, so they who choose can 
spend all the time there. At the hour for going to bed, 
ten o'clock, the lights are put out, and the boarders 
retire. 

Though the boarders at the Home are more numerous 
than they have been — there are forty-four more now 
than there were on the first of last month — there are not 
nearly so many as there should be. 

The idea that the Home may be considered a kind of 
charity, which is so abhorrent to the American mind, 
has prevented many persons from going there, particu- 
larly those of native birth. Some abuses, too, have 
either crept into the institution, or are believed to have 
done so, — and the effect is the same. The Home has 
been avoided, without good reason, and the objections 
urged against it, even if well-grounded, might easily be 
removed. 

There ought to be dozens of such homes in New-Yoi'k, 
and there will be, no doubt, in a few years. Compared 
to tenement houses, they are a blessing, and offer induce- 
ments apart from economy that few working women 
can afford to dispense with. 

During the year, the receipts have paid the current 
expenses, and next year will yield, probably, a small 
interest on the investment. 

The principal obstacle to its complete success is its 
fancied charitable character. But it is no more a charity 
than the Fifth Avenue or Metropolitan hotel is a charity. 
Its boarders pay all that is asked of them. No obliga- 
tion is imposed, no fjxvor conferred. Persons there, are, 
and should feel, as independent as in their own house- 
hold. The trustees and incorporators, among whom are 
many of our best citizenS; are anxious to have the Home 



The Working Women's Home. 553 

filled, and are gratified when it is well patronized. 
Most of the boarders are young women. Not a few of 
them haA^e been married, and are still; but their hus- 
bands are dissipated, and squander their wives' earnings. 
Consequently the wives have come to the Home as to a 
kind of asylum, and live there practically divorced until 
their husbands die or reform. The Home has not been 
patronized by the class one would expect — the poorest ; 
but by those who are in comparatively comfortable cir- 
cumstances. 

Some of the boarders earn $10 to $12, and even $15 
to $16 a week, though the majority have no more than 
$6 to $7. They can live for almost half of that, which 
enables them to save $100 or so during the year. 

The institution is excellent, and in a great centre like 
New-York, very necessary. It will be imitated, no 
doubt, in other cities, and certainly deserves to be. 



CHAPTER LXIY. 

THE MILITARY. 

The Metropolis delights in the mihtary, and might 
aptl}^ sing the popular song from Offenbach's opera, now 
so much in vogue. The parades of its different regi- 
ments the City enjoys like a fresh-hearted child. When- 
ever they turn out the streets are crowded, and busy 
Broadway and the fashionable avenues stand and stare 
with admiring eyes. Constant displays never seem to 
tire the Gothamites, whose appetite for shows and spec- 
tacles can not be sated. 

Manhattan, from the earliest time, has had a military 
force for its protection, and it needs such protection to- 
day more than it ever did before. Its military organi- 
zations have always been numerous and effective, and 
very creditable specimens of citizen-soldiery. They 
have shown themselves worthy of trust and praise in 
time of need, and are really essential to the City's 
security and well-being. They have been styled holi- 
day-soldiery, and carpet-knights, and taunted with the 
epithets ; but when good service was wanted the ridi- 
culed regiments rendered it promptly and courageously. 

In all great cities the military are, if an evil, a 
necessary evil. But for military aid New-York would 
have suffered incalculably in times past. The times 
when it prevented or suppressed riot and bloodshed are 



The Military. 555 

memorable, and many of them of recent date. When 
the abolition mob raged here, long ago, the City sol- 
diery prevented the houses and stores of many resi- 
dents from being torn down. During the great fire of 
1835, which destroyed the entire business portion of 
the town, the military came out after the firemen had 
been exhausted, volunteered their services, and worked 
day and night until the flames were subdued. The 
flour riots that followed in the Spring would have ended 
very disastrously if the soldiers had not awed the mob 
into quietude, and frightened them into dispersion. 

When Mayor Clark, in 1837, Avas elected, the banks 
had concluded to suspend specie payments, and fear- 
ing that the movement would cause a riot, he called 
out the military. They took their position before Trin- 
ity church, planted cannon there, and pointed them 
down Wall street. Those iron monitors kept the peace. 
The precaution was wise ; for the suspension gaused 
great excitement, which would have burst into fury and 
destruction but for the armed preparation. 

The famous Astor-Place opera-house riots, in the 
spring of 1849, were caused by the adherents of For- 
rest, who resolved to mob Macready, then playing there, 
because, as they alleged, the English tragedian had cre- 
ated prejudice against the American when he was in 
London. Some of the most notorious rowdies in the 
Metropolis were in the mob, and while the tumult was 
at its height the Seventh regiment was ordered out. It 
was then, as now, composed of young men of standing 
and education, and was called in derision the '• kid- 
glove" and "dandy" regiment. The roughs did not 
suppose the luxurious Seventh would be of any service, 
and shouted defiance when it was ordered to fire. It 



556 The Great Metropolis. 

ditl fire, however, und wounded several persons, and 
showed such determination and courage that it put 
down the mob. 

When the present Metropolitan police were created 
by the legislature, during Fernando Wood's first term 
of mayoralty, and he, at the head of the City police, 
refused to acknowledge their authorit}^, there was as 
fine a prospect for municipal war as there ever has been 
in the City. Wood was in the City Hall; the Park 
was full of his police, armed with revolvers and clubs ; 
and he had sworn he would not permit the warrant 
that had been issued for his arrest to be served upon, 
him. The Metropolitan police were under the command 
of Simeon Draper, and it was that body which was par- 
ticularly offensive to Wood. While there was every 
probability of a hostile collision, the Seventh regiment, 
on its way to Boston, marched down Broadway, and 
General Sanford, who had charge of the militia, halted 
them, and ordered them to serve the warrant. The 
City police insisted it was their right and duty; but the 
General, believing that such an attempt would cause 
bloodshed, demanded that the military should perform 
the service. They did. An officer entered the Park and 
the City Hall, and served the writ upon Fernando 
Wood, who had declared again and again that he would 
not surrender alive. The presence of the soldiers either 
overawed him, or caused him to change his opinion ; for 
he made no resistance, no further menaces. The serious 
complication was quieted without trouble; but if it had 
been left to the two bodies of police, no doubt hundreds 
of lives would have been lost. 

A few years ago the state militia was converted into 
the National State Guard, which is the best organization 



The Military. 557 

we have yet had. The regiments in the City are called 
the First division, and include the following : First, 
Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, 
Ninth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Twenty-second, Thirty- 
seventh, Fifty-fifth, Sixty-ninth, Seventy-first, Seventy- 
ninth, Ninety-sixth, First Artillery, Washington Gray 
Cavalry, First Cavalry, Second Cavalry. They are 
well equipped, well drilled, and well armed, and have a 
true soldierly pride in their organization. Of the dif- 
ferent regiments and battalions few are complete. 

The crack regiments are the Seventh, Ninth, 
Tw^enty-second, and Fifty-seventh, of which the Seventh 
is, of course, the most renowned, if not the best. 

The whole division numbers about 13,000 men, who 
are of a superior order. They include various nation- 
alities, and many of the members have seen and 
made part of numerous well-fought fields. When the 
War broke out, they proved that they were not soldiers 
in time of peace only, by volunteering promptly, and 
marching to Washington almost in a body. 

The city sent 100,000 men to the field, though, of 
course, a large proportion of those enlisted were from 
other cities and towns — part of the throng of strangers 
who find their way here by a natural law. Of the 
entire number enlisted, 9,000 were killed and wounded, 
and 37,000 served as officers during the rebellion. 

When any of the four crack regiments turn out, particu- 
larly the Seventh, men, w^omen, and children turn out like- 
wise, and stand by the hour on the corners which it is 
knowai they will pass. It is singular, this curiosity, 
this fondness for sight-seeing of New-Yorkers, who, in 
many things, are so blase ; yet, in others, so excitable. 

Waving plumes, gold lace, flashing bayonets, swells of 



558 The Great Metropolis. 

music, seem to have strong magnetic power for the 
populace. Not infrequently the lines of stages are 
drawn off, and the whole tide of vehicular travel inter- 
rupted, that the pompous parade may be seen to advan-, 
tage. The chief defect of the Metropolis is, that it has 
but one good thoroughfare, — Broadway, — and for that 
reason any public demonstration here is much more of a 
nuisance than of an attraction. But our citizens forget 
all inconveniences when their eye is appealed to and 
their love of display gratified. 

Considering the immense number of scoundrels and 
desperadoes here, New-York needs a stronger body than 
her two thousand police to prevent the terrible riots 
that might any moment be directed against property 
and life. We have had instances, again and again, of 
the dangerous element in the midst of us. We know 
how formidable and ferocious it is, though it hides from 
the sunshine, and many deem it non-existent because 
invisible. We can detect, at any time, if we will go out 
of our accustomed paths, the dens of the desperate men 
who have neither conscience nor heart; who would rob 
for pleasure ; burn for malignity ; murder for excitement. 
There are thousands and tens of thousands of such 
wretches within musket-shot of the fashionable prome- 
nades and business quarters, and I can not help but think 
that their knowledge that the transmission of a message 
over the wires would bring 13,000 disciplined, deter- 
mined, experienced men to confront them with deadly 
weapons, exercises a wholesome restraint. 

That is a small army, and would be more than a 
match for ten times the number of villains and criminals 
with no higher courage than brutal strength and desire 
for plunder and rapine give. I fancy nervous people 



The Military. 559 

who have property, parents who have fair daughters, 
fine men who have lovely wives-, rest more calmly over 
this volcano because they remember that the means of 
extinguishing its fierce fires, should they burst forth, are 
near at hand. 

The military have an honorable record in New-York, 
and are indispensable to its security. They are not 
costly, for each regiment receives but $500 a year from 
the City for its armory ; all their other expenses being 
met by the members themselves. They keep up the 
soldierly spirit, and preserve a wholesome feeling of 
rivalry among the different corps. They do a deal of 
good in various ways, and like sentinels in camp make 
it safe for virtue, and wealth, and beauty to sleep while 
the enemy is near. 

Broadway can not exist without its sensations. I 
was recalling the other day the many and different ones 
it had had ; and it occurred to me that the grandest of 
all was the departure of the Seventh regiment for the 
War, in the Spring of 1861. 

Broadway was never so thronged before. Every 
window, every square foot of space, every doorway, 
was crowded. The Seventh, composed of the elite and 
culture of the town, marched from Eighth street to 
Cortlandt; marched, it was believed, to martyrdom; 
but marched unflinchingly, determinedly, heroically to 
meet their doom for their dear country's welfare. 

It was two days after the killing of the Massachu- 
setts soldiers in Baltimore, when the entire North was 
in a state of doubt and anxiety about the issues of the 
Rebellion. 

Such a greeting as the regiment received. A storm 
of handkerchiefs, a deep, earnest, prolonged cheer, and 



560 The Great Metropolis. 

the tens of thousands of men and women standing there 
with wet eyes, and unutlered prayers upon their lips. 
The scene was more trying to the gallant soldiers than 
any shock of battle could have been. They were like 
marble ; moved like machines ; looked not to the right 
or the left, lest the eager face of a loved friend might, 
with its intense sympathy, stir emotions that could not 
be controlled. They went on ; and before, and behind, 
and around them, the deep expression of admiration, 
sympathy, and love, roared like a boisterous and melan- 
choly sea. 

There were fine natures, generous souls, chivalrous 
spirits, marching stoutly, as it was thought, to death, 
through the spotless gates of honor. 

There Theodore Winthrop, the knightly gentleman 
and fearless soldier, walked beside his howitzer, no 
more to return alive, but to come home dead upon the 
gun, all draped in crape and wrapped with the banner of 
stars, the Nation mourning him as heroes are ever 
mourned. 

Sad, eventful day, it will never be forgotten. It was 
one of the first great impulses, the deep agonies of the 
vast struggle which made ambition virtue and courage 
patriotism. 

Broadway had never seen its like; has never since; 
will never see it again. Those who witnessed it bear 
it in mind as an inspiration and an era of .painful joy. 
The mighty City felt the going of the Seventh regi- 
ment to its heart's core. The event has never been 
described as it ought to have been. It thrilled through 
the land. It gave the country five hundred thousand 
soldiers ; it Avas the beginning of the War, the nerver of 
the struggle, the guarantee of victory. 



CHAPTER LXY. 
THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. 

The abandonment of the old system of the Volunteer 
Fire Department, and the adoption of the present Paid 
Department in New- York has been a very efficient 
cause of diminished lawlessness and ruffianism in the 
City. 

Rowdyism never received two such severe blows as 
the establishment of the Metropolitan Police and the 
Paid Fire Department gave it, and it will never recover 
from them. The old police system encouraged ruffian- 
ism and disorder, by insuring to ruffians and criminals 
immunity from punishment, and the engine houses 
furnished them shelter and rallying points for additional 
outrages. The engine houses were indeed the abiding 
places and recruiting offices for the worst class of our 
population. 

The old police were the aiders and abettors — often 
the friends and companions — of the fire-boy roughs ; 
and between the two, rowdyism had an organization 
and a system that made it a power in the municipal 
government most formidable for evil. 

For years before the City Police and the Volunteer 
Department were abolished, every intelligent person 
saw that they were the most serious impediments we 
had to contend with in the establishment of public 

36 



562 The Great Metropolis. 

peace and private security. All the clamor against 
them, all the earnest effort to get rid of them, were of 
no avail until the desperate condition of affairs in the 
City transferred the appointment of the police to the 
State, in 1857. 

The conflict on the 9th of June of that year, for the 
possession of the Street Commissioner's office, when 
Fernando Wood, as Mayor, refused to surrender the 
keys, and the Governor ordered his arrest, is still fresh 
in the minds of the public. The Mayor resisted, and 
the old police under him sided against the Metropoli- 
tans, causing a fierce fight on the steps of the City Hall, 
in which many were wounded. 

On the evening of July 4th the trouble, which seemed 
to have been settled, broke out anew, and caused what 
is known as the Dead Rabbit Riot. The Dead Rabbits — • 
loafers and roughs, thieves and convicts, belonging to 
the Five Points — were on the side of the old police, and 
attacked the Metropolitan patrolmen in the Bowery. 
The Bowery Boys, then a notorious organization of 
fighting men, supported the police, and a series of riots 
ensued in the Sixth Ward ; the Avomen of that locality 
hurling bricks, stones, and other missiles, from the 
houses, upon the heads of the Metropolitans. The 
military were called out, and suppressed the riots, but 
not before twelve persons had been killed and more 
than two hundred wounded. 

The Dead Rabbits were actually dead after that; 
but the Bowery Boys lingered on until the adoption of 
the Paid Fire Department, four years ago, which put a 
quietus upon the Boys, and removed almost every trace 
of their noxious existence. 

The reformation of the engine houses had the same 



The Fire Department. 563 

effect on the rowdies who frequented them, that the 
breaking of pots of earth has upon the plants they con- 
tain. The roughs lost their rendezvous, their asylums, 
and they disappeared as an organization. New- York 
still has rowdies in excess, but they are less numerous 
and f^xr less dangerous than ever before ; and the Paid 
Fire Department is the new boundary between past 
disorder and present improvement. 

The Metropolitan Fire Department is under the con- 
trol of a Board of Commissioners, five in number, who 
have their office in Firemen's Hall, 127 and 129 Mercer 
street, where all the affairs of the Department are trans- 
acted. The Department has one Chief Engineer, at a 
salary of $4,500 ; one Assistant Engineer, at $2,500 ; 
ten District Engineers, each at $1,800 ; forty-five Fore- 
men of Companies, each at $1,300 ; thirty Assistant 
Foremen, each at $1,000; thirty-two Engineers of 
Steamers, each at $1,200 ; four hundred and one pri- 
vates, each at $1,000 ; five hundred and nineteen men 
in all. 

The engine houses, sixty-three in number, have been 
materially altered and improved since the abandon- 
ment of the old system. The volunteer firemen had 
done much damage to the houses, and in many cases 
had claimed, carried off, and stolen private property. 
The buildings were erected by the City at great cost, 
many of them having been elegantly decorated by private 
contributions ; and since they have been repaired they 
are very comfortable and handsome. The paid firemen 
feel a pride in them, and instead of lounging about the 
doorways, carousing and fighting, and often insulting 
passers-by, as their predecessors did, they occupy well- 
furnished sitting rooms while awaiting duty. 



534 The Great Metropolis. 

The number of hand-engines is nine, of steam-engines 
in active service thirty-four, and in reserve eight. The 
hose carriages and hook and ladder companies are re- 
spectively fifteen and eight. The second class steamers 
have been found the best for general and efficient serv- 
ice, and cost about $4,000 apiece. 

The cost of the Paid Fire Department the past year 
was nearly $900,000, while that of the volunteer sys- 
tem during its last year was less than $600,000, though 
it must be remembered that about $700,000 of the former 
expense was for the pay of the force. Whatever the 
increase in expenditure, there is no doubt the Paid De- 
partment is much more serviceable and effective in ex- 
tinguishing and preventing fires than was the Volunteer. 

On an alarm of fire an average of one-sixth of the 
entire force goes to the place designated, and if the 
alarm be repeated the number is increased to one-third. 
The time required for harnessing the horses and leaving 
the engine house is twenty-five seconds. 

The present force is under almost military discipline, 
and furnishes a marked contrast to the volunteers. A 
few years ago a fire in New-York was a revolution, 
caused much more clamor and excitement than a change 
of Government in Mexico or the South American Re- 
publics. When the alarm was sounded the town Avas 
turned upside down. A wild mob rushed through the 
streets with the engines, bellowing through their trum- 
pets, hallooing at the top of their voices to the terror 
and danger of all quiet citizens. A fire then Avas little 
less than a riot. It furnished excitement to the idle, 
and an opportunity for the dishonest. Dwellings and 
stores, near the fire, were often broken open and plun- 
dered under pretense of saving property. Anybody 



The Fire Department. 665 

could act as a fireman. There was no order, no restric- 
tion, no responsibility. 

With the new system every thing is different. Order 
and discipline take the place of numbers. The police 
exclude all persons not members of the force, and each 
man does his own work. R-obberies at fires, once the 
rule, have now become a rare exception. As an 
instance, not long ago, during a fire near Tiffany & Co.'s 
great jewelry establishment, in Broadway, the firemen 
had access to every part of the building. They could 
have stolen and concealed small articles of great value 
without any fear of detection, and yet nothing what- 
ever was taken, a fact that the firm gratefully acknowl- 
edged at the time. The members of the force, as a 
class, are sober, intelligent, and exemplary citizens, as 
unlike their predecessors as it is easy to imagine. 

The whole number of fires during the past year was 
873, incurring losses of $5,711,000, being $717,736 less 
than the loss of the year previous. It is believed that 
the number of fires will steadily decrease as the depart^ 
ment is improved and perfected. New-York has long 
been famous for fires, and many foreigners religiously 
believe there is no hour of the twenty-four that some 
building is not burning down here. No wonder they 
thought so once. We have made a reformation, how- 
ever, and before many years a fire will be as unusual in 
New-York as it is in London. 

Many of the fires are incendiary ; but such increased 
vigilance has been instituted that they must grow rarer 
and rarer. It has long been observed that the dullness 
of trade in the City acts like a combustible, and that 
well-insured stocks of goods when not in active demand 
are in the greatest peril of being burned. This phe- 



566 The Great Metropolis. 

nomenon has never been satisfactorily explained, though 
there are doubters of human integrity who claim to 
account for it by natural causes. 

The fire-alarm telegraph has greatly improved in its 
working, but would be still more effective if the Relay 
& Bell magnet, with the Morse key, were introduced 
into the engine houses, so that alarms could be sent out 
for other stations than their own. The expense attend- 
ing the purchase of the best apparatus would be so large 
that the Commissioners have refrained from obtaining 
.it. The fire stations of the City are about 500, and are 
indicated by the striking of the bells in the towers accord- 
ing to the numbers. Thus, 323 is the corner of Tw^enty- 
sixth street and Eighth avenue. Ten strokes give the 
general alarm ; then follow three strokes in quick suc- 
cession ; a pause ; two more strokes ; a pause, and three 
strokes, which, by consulting a little pamphlet distrib- 
uted throughout the City, shows almost the exact loca- 
tion of the fire. 

All the fires, Avith important particulars, are tele- 
graphed to police head-quarters in Mulberry street, 
where the reporters of the daily papers obtain their 
information without going to the spot, which, in a city 
like New- York, would often occupy more time than 
could be spared between the occurrence of the fire and 
the hour of publication. 

The bell-towers in different parts of the town are fur- 
nished with excellent bells, that can be heard to a great 
distance. The bells at the Post-office, City Hall, Union 
and Jefferson Markets, are among the most famous and 
resonant ; three of them are new, and well sustain the 
reputation of the old. 

The condition of the firemen, morally and physically, 



The Fire Department. 5G7 

is very good. They keep their uniforms, their appara- 
tus, and their horses exceedingly neat; showing much 
of the care and pride about person and property that 
regular soldiers feel. It used to be said that men who 
were hired would not be found to discharge the duties 
like volunteers ; but the experiment has proved exactly 
the opposite. 

The Commissioners have constant applications for 
situations, and whenever vacancies occur, there are at 
least ten candidates for each vacancy. The spirit of 
rivalry which once resulted in violent quarrels, fights, 
and riots, now reveals itself in a spirit of generous emu- 
lation, that redounds to tiie general advantage and effi- 
cacy of the Department. 

The fire insurance companies, more deeply interested 
than any other portion of the community, bear witness 
to the great superiority of the new system over the old. 
Improvements are being made steadily, and, though 
New-York is still behind other and smaller cities in its 
Fire Department, it is likely that in a few years it will 
be equal to any of them. 

No one living out of the Metropolis can realize what 
a great relief and advance the Paid Department is. 
Instead of being a nuisance and a nest of rowdyism and 
vice, it is a protection, an insurer of the public peace, 
and a municipal benefaction. 



CHAPTER LXYI. 
RACING AND FAST HORSES. 

The Metropolis has "developed" in nothing more 
rapidly than in the quality of its horses. The last ten 
or twelve years have made a revolution in horse-flesh. 
Men now drive, and have an enthusiasm about blooded 
{Stock, who, until recently, had no interest in the turf, or 
any thing belonging to it. They were satisfied to jog 
along behind slow and sober steeds, until, catching 
the fetlock fever, they subscribed to The Spirit of the 
Times, and spent thousands of dollars in making addi- 
tions to their stables. 

America has been imitating England, the North fol- 
lowing the South, in making the turf one of the pleasures 
proper and honorable to the class of gentlemen. The 
time when men owning and delighting in horses were 
contemptuously spoken of as "jockeys," no longer 
exists. No man of the world, who has liberal means 
and aspires to fashion, considers his establishment com- 
plete without a well-supplied stable. Our first men of 
business, and even members and dignitaries of the 
church, possess and enjoy handsome roadsters, and 
discuss their " time " and " bottom " over the dinner- 
table, in the counting-room, and in ecclesiastical portals. 

The opening of the Central Park, with its fine drives, 
Uas, more than any thing else, given a new interest to 



Racing and Fast Horses. 569 

fast horses and fine stables. The Park is a magnificent 
place to exhibit horses, and men buy them for the 
privilege of displaying their good points and high spirit 
there. Any pleasant afternoon you can see in the Park 
the change it has wrought upon persons who like to 
move rapidly on wheels. 

The race-courses of New-York have, until recently, 
been on Long Island. The Centreville has fallen into 
disuse ; but the Fashion, Union, and Long Island tracks 
are still the scenes of spirited contests between trotters. 
They are not so popular as they once were ; for they are 
out of the way, and the roads leading to them not 
desirable. Ten or fifteen years ago, the most remarka- 
ble contests were on those tracks, both by running and 
trotting horses. Eclipse and Sir Henry had their great 
struggle ; Fashion made her famous running time ; Gray 
Eagle and Wagner awoke wild enthusiasm ; Lady Suf- 
folk, Flora Temple, George M. Patchen, Dexter, Gen. 
Butler, Whalebone, Lantern, Mountain Boy, and other 
celebrated trotters have shown their best speed on the 
Long Island courses. Of late, only trotters have gone 
upon those tracks, which though very good, decrease 
each season in public favor. 

The Jerome Park, the newest and finest course in the 
country, at Fordham, Westchester county, is now 
devoted to running races exclusively. It is named after 
Leonard W. Jerome, the well-known turfman and Wall 
street operator, who gave the land for the purpose. 
The Jerome Park is managed and controlled by the 
members of the American Jockey Club, — citizens of 
fortune and education, of high social position, and 
prominent in business circles. Their intention has been 
to make the turf respectable ; to render racing a refined 



570 The Great Metropolis 

and dignified recreation among gentlemen, and to remove 
from it all unfairness and trickery. This has been 
accomplished, and the races at Jerome Park resemble 
the Derby in England, and the Longchamps in France. 
The best class of people, of both sexes, attend, and the 
grand display is well worth witnessing. 

The men and women dress for the Jerome Park, 
though in different style, as they do for the opera oi' an 
evening reception. They are brave and gallant; look 
their prettiest, and behave their best. You see there 
the Broadway merchant and Beaver street importer, 
the Broad street broker and exchange place banker, the 
Nassau street journalist and Fifth avenue dandy, the 
club-lounger and Tenth street artist, the belle of 
Madison avenue and the leader of Twenty-third street 
fashion, the majestic entertainer of Fifth avenue and 
the charming coquette of Stuyvesant square. Silks 
and laces, velvets and jewels, plumes and perfumes, 
flowers and brocades, ravishing beauties and chivalrous 
cavaliers, are there in profusion. The Park is an 
excellent place to witness the fashion, and wealth, and 
culture of the City ; and the races there often become 
secondary, as an attraction, to the brilliant crowd in 
attendance. 

Another show-place for fine trotters is Peter Dubois's 
track, near Mc Comb's dam, where, on any fair after- 
noon, most of the fine horses owned by private gentlemen 
can be seen. Many a friendly contest is had there ; 
and speed is reached, not unfrequently, that surprises 
''the drivers themselves. Dubois's is growing more and 
more into favor, and several hundreds of thousands of 
dollars' worth of blooded stock is visible there in a few 
hours, during the pleasant Spring and Autumn months. 



Racing and Fast Horses. 571 

Harlem lane is still another field for the display of 
fine stock. General Grant was invited there when he 
visited New- York, after the close of the Rebellion, and 
was delighted with the splendid turn-outs that dashed 
before and around him, doing honor to the occasion. 
It is an excellent trotting-ground, and has a wide repu- 
tation with lovers of the turf. 

Samuel N. Pike, of opera-house fame, is soon to lay 
out a splendid race-course, on the New-Jersey flats. He 
has a very liberal way of doing things, and will, no 
doubt, give New-York something to be proud of. 

Among the many gentlemen who own blooded and 
expensive horses, Robert Bonner, of The Ledger^ is the 
most conspicuous. In his stables are Dexter (the fastest 
trotter in the World — his best time being 2 :17^), the 
Auburn horse. Young Pocahontas, Peerless, Lady Palmer, 
Lantern, and Flatbush Maid. Bonner, though willing to 
spend any sum for a good horse, is conscientiously 
opposed to racing, and will not consent to any contest 
for money, under any circumstances. He will not sell 
horses, either. He gave |25,000 or $30,000 for Dexter, 
and would not part with him for twice the amount. The 
value of his blooded stock is not less than $100,000 to 
$150,000. He has an ambition to own the fastest trot- 
ters in America; and, no doubt, if some horse were to do a 
mile inside of Dexter's best, Bonner would pay $100,000 
for him. He has been urged again and again to trot 
Dexter against some other fleet animal, but his invaria- 
ble reply is, that 2 : 17| must be beaten before the prop- 
osition is even entertainable. The only way he will bet 
is to put up a certain amount on his horse's capacity to 
trot a mile within a certain time. If he don't, Bonner 
will give the amount named to a charitable purpose. 



572 The Great Metropolis. 

The famous journalist seems to have almost as much 
interest in horses as in The Ledger. He is what might 
be called, if there were any such word, an equinarian. 
He takes the same care of his beloved steeds that a 
parent does of a favorite child. He studies their com- 
fort in every way, and his handsome stables are models 
of horse-homes. Every day he visits his elegant stalls; 
examines his fleet property; fondles and talks to it 
in the tenderest manner. They know him thoroughly, 
and will, no doubt, in time, be induced to write for The 
Ledger. Almost every afternoon he drives in the Park 
or Harlem lane, on Dubois's track, or tO High Bridge, in a 
double team ; and his splendid turn-out always attracts 
attention on the road. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt, after Bonner, is probably the 
greatest horse-fancier in Manhattan. He has long been 
anxious to buy Dexter and some other of the journal- 
ist's blooded stock ; but he can't, with all his millions. 
The Commodore owns a dozen fine horses; but his best 
and fastest are Mountain Boy, Post Boy, and Mountain 
Girl, which could not be purchased at less than fabulous 
figures, as Vanderbilt, like The Ledger proprietor, is a 
buyer, not a seller. 

William Turnbull, a prosperous merchant, is a promi- 
nent turfman and lover of horses. He has extensive 
and costly stables ; and, among other crack trotters, 
boasts of Commodore Vanderbilt, Lew Pettee, and Wil- 
lie Schepper. 

William Simmons, the wealthy broker, shows off his 
two fast trotters, George Wilkes and Honest Allen, in 
the Park drives and along the Bloomingdale road (now 
Broadway), when the weather is favorable, and has 
several roadsters beside. 



Racing and Fast Horses. 573 

Daniel L. Pettee, the South street iron merchant, has 
Ella Sherwood. Gardiner G. Howland, the well-known 
merchant, owns and drives Lady Irving and mate. 
George B. Allen, the Broad street broker; Edward 
Matthews, Jerome B. Fellows, Lester Wallack, E. T. 
Simmons, and many others, have fine trotters in their 
stables. 

Among the owners of running horses are August Bel- 
mont, the banker ; William R. Travers, the William 
street broker; John Hunter, M. H. Sanford, Leonard 
W. Jerome, Francis and Lewis Morris, James S. Wat- 
son, Paul Forbes, and others. They all have fine sta- 
bles, in which numerous thorough-bred roadsters may 
be found, faring almost as daintily as the celebrated 
stallion that Caligula made consul. 

The number of superb horses that are owned and 
driven here, though they may not be called fast in 
sporting circles, is very large. It is not uncommon for 
men of business and retired merchants to have stables 
that have cost from $10,000 to $50,000, and not a few 
have expended $100,000 on horse-flesh alone. 

Fast stock and betting are like cause and effect. 
Owners of good horses always have faith enough in 
them to back their performances with money; and, con- 
sequently, laying wagers on races is becoming more and 
more a custom and a fashion. Whenever a contest is to 
take place over the Union, Fashion, or Long Island 
courses, or at the Jerome Park, pools are advertised and 
sold at some well-known place, like Lafayette Hall, or 
the Astor House, or some club, or rendezvous of the 
sporting fraternity. 

Pool selling is managed in this way : The man who 
sells the pools asks those present how much is betted 



574 The Great Metropolis. 

on the choice of, say four horses, — Dexter, Mountain 
Boy, Lantern, and Bruno. A bets $1,000, and takes 
Dexter ; B bets $300, and takes Mountain Boy ; C 
bets $150, and takes Lantern; D bets $50, and takes 
Bruno. Of course. Dexter is the favorite ; but the 
smaller amounts laid on the other horses are thought to 
make the chances about even. The pool is $1,500, and 
the better on the winning horse gets the whole amount. 

Pool-selling usually draws a crowd, when the race is 
an interesting one. All sorts of people attend it, — turf- 
men of fashion, blacklegs, loafers, merchants, and pick- 
pockets. Betting and racing make strange companions, 
and establish a bond of sympathy between persons of 
the most different calling and character. 

Men who experience a passion for horses are often 
more affected by it than by any other passion. It 
seems to absorb them. They turn to the subject on all 
occasions, arid their conversation is interlarded with 
l)hrases borrowed from the stable. Horses are a source 
of profound pleasure to many of our citizens, as is 
evident to one who drives out to the Park or Harlem 
Line, Dubois's track, or High Bridge. He will see, at 
any of those places, splendid turn-outs, from the sin- 
gle horse in a light buggy to the pretentious four-in- 
hand. Long strides, crimson nostrils, sleek coats, 
whirling wheels, admiring faces, tightened reins, clouds 
of dust, with a general rapidity of life and a great 
enthusiasm for the road, will be strikingly apparent. 
Our fashionable turf-men would be wretched without 
their daily drive. It is meat and drink for them. 
Every year it grows more a necessity of their daily 
life, and is now the brightest segment in their round of 
pleasure. 



CHAPTER LXYIL 
GIFT ENTERPRISES AND SWINDLES. 

Cities take the nonsense out of a man, it has been 
said. They do more : they take his purse whenever 
they have a chance ; and the longer it is, the more apt 
he is to lose it. New-York, particularly, is armed against 
unsophisticated strangers, and offers the services of its 
sons to relieve them of the last dollar they have at the 
earliest moment, and with the most imperturbable 
audacity. 

William" Sharp stands in Broadway and the Bowery, 
in Chatham and West street, waiting for his good friend, 
John Greenhorn ; takes John to his bosom, and robs 
John according to the code of metropolitan morals. 

Hundreds of persons in this City live year after year 
by plundering those whose homes are in the country. 
Frequently they have an opportunity to swindle the 
rustics in town ; but so many of the latter fail to visit 
Manhattan that it behooves Sharp to communicate with 
John upon his native heath. 

To do this effectually Gift Enterprises, as they are 
called, have been established. They extend throughout 
the country; all credulous men, women and children 
are made parties to the liberal scheme. The Enterprises 
are managed thus : the principal office is located in 
New-York, wdth branches in Boston, Philadelphia, Balti- 
more, Chicago, and all the principal cities. The managers 



576 The Great Metropolis. 

call themselves Boggs, Simpkins & Co., or Thompson, 
Jones & Smith, take an office in some prominent quarter 
— Broadway is their favorite — and advertise in all the 
country papers that they are to have a grand concert at 
Irving, Tammany, or Apollo Hall, when a drawing of 
handsome prizes will take place. A list of the prizes 
then follows, and is of a very tempting character. Gold 
watches, diamond pins, pearl bracelets, melodeons, 
pianos, emerald rings, horses and carriages, are offered, 
with the statement that the prizes will, if required, be 
exchanged for money. 

The managers of the concert get hold of directories 
of various cities, country newspapers, letter lists, sub- 
scription lists to newspapers, and obtain from them 
thousands of names. To those names, all over the 
country, they direct neatly lithographed circulars, 
setting forth the advantages in glowing terms of the 
proposed concert and drawing. It is expressly stated 
that any one taking a set of tickets, fifteen in number, 
will be guaranteed a prize worth at least $100, on condi- 
tion that the person receiving the prize will show it to 
his or her friends, and inform them how and where he or 
she got it. 

The tickets are $1 each ; but, as a special inducement, 
it is declared that a set will be sent for $10, if the tickets 
are distributed. By such means the cupidity of credulous 
people is appealed to. They fancy they will have a 
handsome reward for their pains. They make an effort 
to merit the prize, and usually dispose of the entire set 
of tickets. They inclose $10 to Boggs, Simpkins & Co., 
dream of what they will secure, very much as children 
dream of hung-up stockings on Christmas eve, and never 
hear any thing more of their money or the concert. 



Gift Enterprises and Swindles. 577 

Possibly they come to town, and try to find out 
something about the firm. They call at the office. It 
is handsomely furnished ; but Boggs can't be found, nor 
Simpkins, nor the Co. Each one of the firm has gone 
somewhere. They may call again and again ; but it 
will always be with the same result. The truth is there 
is no such person as Boggs or Simpkins. The managers 
are fictitious ; have a nominal existence only to swindle. 

If the question is laid before the police nothing can 
be done. The ticket admits the holder to a concert 
when it takes place; but the date is never given. 
The managers have a right to charge what they choose 
to an entertainment, and to offer any prizes they see fit. 
These Gift Enterprises have been so often exposed of 
late that they don't meet with such success as they 
used to. But still there are persons verdant enough to 
be imposed upon, and will be, no doubt, for many 
years. 

The managers of such swindles often claim to have 
drawings ; giving as prizes, watches, rings, and brace- 
lets, valued at such and such a rate. If the victimsJiave 
received a watch for $200, worth $10 or $15, and seek 
redress, the swindlers say tke^ valued it at $200; but 
the worth of it is quite another thing; and so evade the 
law again. 

A very common mode of operation is for a fictitious 
firm to inclose a lithographed note to some one, whose 
name they have obtained in the manner already de- 
scribed, stating that he has drawn a prize valued at 
$200 ; that the rules of the company require payment 
of five or ten per cent, upon all prizes drawn; that, 
therefore, on receipt of $5 or $10, the prize, usually a 
gold watch, will be sent by express. 



78 The Great Metropolis. 

The person into whose hands the note falls knows he 
has never bought a ticket, but presumes he has been 
mistaken for somebody else. His covetousness is 
appealed to. He is tempted into dishonesty. He 
becomes a party to the fraud ; incloses the sum de- 
manded, and of course that is the end of the matter. 
He is naturally ashamed to confess his weakness, and 
the swindlers in turn profit by his cupidity. 

Still another trick is to send a circular to one of the 
greenhorns in the country, inclosing a ten-cent note 
postal currency (genuine), informing him that if he 
wants one hundred of the notes for a dollar, he can get 
them by inclosing the amount. The packets are from 
$10 to $100. The swindler says the currency will do 
for betting or making a show, but does not mention 
any thing about passing it as counterfeit money. 
Greenhorn sees the postal currency looks well, and after 
investigation learns that it is good. He immediately 
jumps at the idea of getting ten dollars for one dol- 
lar, and writes with inclosure. It is needless to say he 
never receives an answer to his letter, and does not 
deserve to. 

Drawings for money are advertised, prizes $5, $10, 
$50, and $100, up to $500 and $1,000. A confidential 
circular is sent, and the recipient is told if he will aid 
the managers in making their lottery known, that he 
shall have a prize of $100. Numerous tickets and 
circulars are forwarded for his distribution. Whether 
he does any thing with them or not he pretends to, and 
writes the firm to that effect. The swindlers return 
answ^er that they have set aside $100 for his services ; 
inquire if he will have the money remitted by a draft 
or in Treasury notes ; and add incidentally that five per 



Gift Enterprises and Swindles. 579 

cent., according to the inflexible rule of the firm, is 
always charged for such advances. 

The unsophisticated fellow sends $5, and loses it 
instead of getting $95 for nothing, as he fondly imagined. 

These scoundrels have still another device. They 
send a packet of tickets for a lottery to anybody whose 
name they have procured, requesting that he will return 
the money for them by mail. Of course no man is 
foolish enough to do that. The tickets are returned, 
left in the Post-office, or destroyed with some indig- 
nation. 

In two or three weeks another circular is mailed to 
the effect that no doubt the person addressed had re- 
mitted the money, but that, owing to postal detention 
or failure, it had not been received. The lottery dealers 
inform him one of the tickets has drawn a prize, and 
that it will be forwarded as soon as the percentage, five 
per cent., is sent to the address. The prize named is 
generally $100 or $200. Verdant hastens to mail $5 
or $10, and the firm is silent forever after as the grave, 

Sham jewelry establishments and one dollar stores 
are the abode of swindlers. Every thing sold there is 
manufactured for the purpose. It is not what it ap- 
pears ; and those who patronize the concerns are 
wheedled out of their money always. They are sold 
fine silver and gold watches that prove pewter and 
brass ; and yet, by a quibble or some kind of adroit- 
ness, no hold is given to the law. 

Mock auctions, though not so common as they used 
to be, are stiU carried on in Broadway, the Bowery, 
Canal street, and Third avenue. The buyers who are 
in the stores are all in league with the auctioneers. 
They bid up the goods, praise them, declare them great 



580 The Great Metropolis. 

bargains ; offer to give greenhorn twice what he pays if 
he will call at their place of business ; and he fancies 
they are strangers, and honest like himself. The auc- 
tioneer exhibits one article ; greenhorn buys it, and be- 
fore he gets it, it is exchanged for something else. 

A good gold watch is offered, and knocked down for 
$20, though it is evidently worth five times the amount. 
The watch handed over to the countryman is pure brass, 
its value $2 or $3. If he attempts to get his money 
back, he is outs worn by a dozen audacious fellows, who 
protest before high Heaven that he never paid more 
than $2 for the watch. They threaten him too, and if 
he is not a man of nerve, they intimidate him. Gene- 
rally he deems himself lucky to escape with an unbroken 
crown, and is in no mood for searching after the money 
he has been defrauded of. 

New- York must have several hundreds of these gift 
enterprises and swindling establishments. No one is 
responsible for them. No actual legal guilt can be fixed 
upon them. The police have broken them up time after 
time ; but they arise in another place. They seem per- 
fectly irrepressible. They will continue while some men 
are dishonest and others are credulous ; and in such a 
city as New- York it is not likely they will ever cease 
to exist. It is wonderful in this day of general educa- 
tion and universal newspaper circulation, that so many 
persons can be defrauded by such shallow tricks as those 
that have been described. 

One of the most extraordinary^ frauds since the War 
was that of the Gettysburg Asylum, which was to be a 
home for invalid and crippled soldiers of the Union 
cause. The managers had actually obtained a charter 
from Pennsylvania in consideration of $10,000, and 



i 



Gift Enterprises and Swindles. 5 SI 

several Northern Generals were induced to lend their 
names to the scheme. Magnificent prizes were offered, 
a brown-stone mansion in Fifth avenue, a farm, a lot of 
splendid diamonds, $100,000 in Treasury notes, and 
rosewood pianos among the rest. Their complete value, 
according to the advertisements, was $700,000, and 
they were to be distributed among 1,200,000 ticket- 
holders at $1 apiece. 

The papers were full of the lottery; a small ship 
used to be drawn up and down Broadway, distributing 
circulars ; every effort was made to call attention to the 
swindle. About one million tickets were sold, when it 
was discovered that the managers of the enterprise 
were notorious lottery dealers in Baltimore. 

Pennsylvania withdrew its charter, and the Generals 
their names. The scheme began to look fraudulent, but 
the advertisements were kept up ; a concert was given 
at Irving Hall; the crowd in attendance was assured 
all the promises would be redeemed. A fortnight after, 
the whole thing fell to pieces. 

The public lost a million, and to this day not a single 
ticket has been worth the paper it was printed on. 

For all who feel tempted to invest money in lotteries 
and prize concerts, it would be well to remember that 
any man who proposes to give more than dollar for dol- 
lar in any way is a designing scoundrel seeking for a 
victim. 



CHAPTER LXYin. 
THE WICKEDEST WOMAN IN THE CITY. 

The wickedest woman in New York, according to the 
popular verdict, is no doubt Madame Restell, the famous 
or infjimous '' female physician and professor of mid- 
wifery," as she is styled in her advertisements and in 
the City Directory. 

Some sixteen or seventeen years ago she was arrested 
and tried for abortion ; and the death of a young woman, 
who had been put under the Madame's treatment to 
conceal a story of sin and shame, was laid at the mid- 
wife's door. 

Restell lived in Chambers street then, and was com- 
paratively obscure. Her trial created intense excite- 
ment all over the country. The newspapers teemed 
with its details, and editorials upon editorials were 
written, reflecting severely and eloquently upon the 
crime with which she was charged. Enough evidence 
was offered to prove her guilty, not only of the particu- 
lar offense, but of numerous other offenses equally 
heinous. 

There seemed to be no escape for her. The peniten- 
tiary stared her in the face, and if the law and justice 
had been administered, she would have been sent to 
Sing Sing for the remainder of her natural life. But 
she was tried in New-York, where law is one thing and 
justice another ; where he who has the most money, or 



The Wickedest Woman in the City. 583 

the political influence to bear upon the judge, is sure to 
gain his case. The Madame had liberal means, acquired 
by her calling, and consequently she escaped. She 
bought witnesses, judges, juries, it is alleged, and was 
duly acquitted. It was stated at the time that she 
purchased "justice " to the extentof $100,000, and that 
she considered it one of the best investments she had 
ever made. It certainly was, if preservation from life- 
long imprisonment has a value in money. 

That trial of Madame Restell was a superb advertise- 
ment of her business. It made her known everywhere, 
and has probably been # i means of adding to her for- 
tune twice the sum she expended. 

Some years after the trial she removed up town — it 
was considered very far up then — having purchased a 
lot in the Fifth avenue, corner Fifty-second street, 
and erected a large and comfortable brown-stone front 
there. She is said to have made the purchase through 
an agent, as the owner of the real estate would have 
declined to sell her the property on account of her pro- 
fession and unenviable notoriety. 

The fashionable thoroughfare was more and more 
occupied with elegant mansions. Real estate advanced 
in price, and as the tide of society went toward the 
Park, many and munificent were the offers to the mid- 
wife to dispose of her property. She was pressed to 
take five times the amount she paid, but she would not. 
She said she had bought the place for a home, and that 
she intended to end her days there. No importunity, 
no display of bank checks or bank notes could change 
her resolution. 

There she remains, in her tall, tawdry-looking house to 
this day. The lots at the side of her dwelling can not 



584 The Great Metropolis. 

be sold, even though houses built on them would be too 
far from hers to catch contamination. They have been 
offered, it is said, at one-quarter of what those on the 
next block have brought, but there are no takers. Law- 
suits have been threatened against Restell to dispossess 
her ; but she has no dread of law. She declares she is 
a regular physician, and as much entitled to practice her 
profession as Dr. Carnochan or Dr. Dixon. Those who 
are anxious to get rid of, her, remember her triumph 
long ago, and feel that she is too rich to be prose- 
cuted with any hope of success on the Island of Man- 
hattan. *iv 

Restell is so notorious that she is more talked of and 
■written about than even Greeley or Stewart. She is a 
godsend to correspondents of the country press, and 
they tell such tales of her as are related of Messalina, 
Sabina Pompeia, and other notably wicked women of 
antiquity, in the interdicted books that have come down 
to us. 

. She does precisely what might be expected from her 
calling, and, to those acquainted with her, makes no 
secret of it. She claims, say those who pretend to 
know her, to have done a great deal of good by prevent- 
ing the errors of persons of position from coming to 
light; to have saved many good but unfortunate women 
from ruin and self-destruction ; to have increased the 
sum of human happiness rather than to have diminished 
it. Her logic is peculiar, and the investigation of her 
premises would open a series of moral questions that 
are too delicate for public discussion. She declares she 
has possession of too many secrets of fashionable fami- 
lies ever to be disturbed in her home; that she is a 
power in the Great City, and that if she wished she 



The Wickedest Woman in the City. 585 

could open rich and fragrant closets, and show skeletons 
whose existence no one suspects. 

How much of her statements is true, and how much 
mere menace and gasconade, only she and her patrons 
know. There is good reason to believe, however, that 
a woman who has spent thirty years in a luxurious and 
licentious city like this, and followed her calling perse- 
veringly, must have knowledge that would better be 
hidden from those who would keep their faith in human 
nature. 

Restell advertises her medicines, her offices, her 
hours, and her peculiar practice, in the daily news- 
papers, as do dozens of the same profession. Everybody 
is aware of her business and her location. She can not 
be accused of walking in darkness, or shrouding herself 
in mystery. 

She is reported to be immensely wealthy, but no 
doubt her wealth is exaggerated. She has a husband — 
a genuine husband, they say — to whom she was married 
years ago, and a daughter who is herself a wife. lie is 
a Russian named Lohman, and is her financier. She is 
English, and was once a bar-maid in a London gin-shop. 
She came here at eighteen ; made the acquaintance of a 
physician ; obtained a smattering of medicine, and 
conceived the notion of adopting the calling she 
has since so successfully followed. Before she entered 
upon her present profession she was for some time a 
clairvoyant physician and fortune-teller, and by that 
trickery got a start in life. It is said she has much 
knowledge and skill, which she might easily have after 
twenty-five years of such a specialty. 

Once she was handsome, I understand ; but now, in 
her fiftieth year, she is a gross, coarse, though not 



5S6 The Great Metropolis. 

heartless-looking woman, with black eyes, black hair, 
barely touched with gray, and might play Azucena in 
the opera with little " making up." Her face is familiar 
to many, for she drives in the Park nearly every 
pleasant afternoon, and her turnout is recognized by its 
vulgar display. She would be mistaken for the propri- 
etress of a bagnio, with her flaring colors, her glittering 
jewels, her tawdry carriage, for she is the embodiment 
of the principle of bad taste in all that belongs to her. 

Her house. No. 657 Fifth avenue, might well be her 
abode. The curtains are daubs of color, and every 
thing about it indicates vulgarity and prosperity. 
Those who have been inside of it say gilt and gaudiness 
are visible from cellar to garret. It is not at all the 
palace it is proclaimed to be in the country papers. 
On the contrary, it is rather a plain house for the 
Avenue, and its furniture and appurtenances, probably, 
cost less than those of hundreds of fashionable dwell- 
ings in that quarter. 

The Madame has no society — she is a perfect pariah 
in New- York — but she seems to enjoy herself, and grow 
as fleshy as if she had the approval of a good conscience, 
and lived a life of innocence and good deeds. She is 
fond of making money ; her practice is worth $30,000 a 
year to her ; but it is said she gives liberally to those 
who are poor and in distress, and always without the 
slightest ostentation. She is reported to have sheltered 
many a poor girl from the pursuit of libertines, and to 
have restored not a few to the homes from which, in a 
moment of weakness and passion, they had strayed. 

Let us hope this is so, for it is pleasant to believe 
that those who are thought the wickedest have redeem- 
ing traits. 



The Wickedest Woman in the City. 587 

This tall brown-stone dwelling in the Avenue could 
tell what would make sensation stories for many years, 
if it had the gift of tongues. Whenever I pass it, it 
seems to cast a deeper shadow than any other house, 
and a sense of chilliness, such as comes from opened 
vaults in the graveyard, to steal from its grim doorways 
and windows hung with showy curtains, which shut in 
what few of us dare believe, and none of us care to see. 



CHAPTEE LXIX. 
THE MATRIMONIAL BROKERS. 

Matrimonial brokers are of recent origin in New-York, 
They seem to prosper and decline, to flourish and fail 
periodically, as if affected by agencies too subtle for 
detection. Just at present, the season appears unfavor- 
able. They may have an active business ; but they do 
not advertise it as they often have done. Possibly they 
have become so well established that patronage flows in 
upon them without publication of their calling. The 
morning papers now contain few advertisements inform- 
ing the people where they can obtain excellent wives 
'and husbands, and thus secure their comfort and happi- 
ness for life at very small expense. In the Spring, 
.printers' ink will be used more liberally ; for then the 
birds choose their mates, and why shouldn't men and 
women go to the brokers, pay $5, and be blessed ? 

The advertisements — we advertise every thing in New- 
York, — are usually after the following fashion : — 

" Marriage. — Young ladies and gentlemen desirous 
of being wisely and happily married, will consult their 
interest by applying to the undersigned, who gives all 
his attention to this branch of business, and who has 
already been very successful in bringing together 
persons adapted to each other by similarity of taste, 
temperament, and sympathy. Terms reasonable. All 
communications strictly confidential. 

" Henry Hymen, No. Broadway." 



The Matrimonial Brokers. . 589 

" Wedded Happiness Desired. — It is well known that 
nothing conduces so much to happiness in life as a proper 
marriage. To avoid all mistakes in selecting partners, 
persons of either sex, who contemplate matrimony, 
should call at once on George Jacobs, » 
Matrimonial Broker, No. Bleecker street. 

" N. B. — Mr. Jacobs has the best of opportunities and 
the amplest facilities for accommodating his patrons. 
He has had large experience, and can say without 
vanity, that he has made matches for which hundreds 
of ladies and gentlemen are eternally grateful to him. 
They have acknowledged their gratitude in autograph 
letters, which will be shown to his patrons if desired." 

"Matrimonial Brokers. — John Johnson & Co., No. 
Bowery, offer their services to ladies wishing 



agreeable and wealthy husbands, or to gentlemen 
desiring beautiful, rich, and accomplished wives. They 
arrange interviews or correspondence between parties, 
and leave nothing undone to insure a marriage that will 
result to the satisfaction of all. The success that has 
heretofore crowned their efforts, induces them to believe 
they have a firm hold upon the public confidence. They 
respectfully solicit a continuance of patronage." 

One would hardly think such advertisements could 
attract customers. The idea of seeking marriage before 
one has experienced the affection that leads to it, seems 
unnatural to persons who regard the relation of the sexes 
sentimentally. But the majority of mortals — I mean 
men — are matter-of-fact, and look upon every thing in a 
purely practical way. They marry as they buy a house 
or sell a horse, invest in real estate or go abroad. The 



590 The Great Metropolis. 

reason they remain unwedded is because they don't find 
time to look for a wife. If any one finds her for them, 
and throw her in their way, they take her as they would 
any piece of property that seems desirable. 

Matrimonial brokerage is merely match-making sys- 
tematized. The brokers do for money what amateurs 
do for excitement and from a passion for managing. 
They have an uncertain trade, but yet more business 
than would be supposed. They don't expect much 
custom from home, or from cities generally ; but look 
for it from the country people, to whom they send 
circulars soliciting patronage. The marriages arranged 
by brokers rarely turn out well ; but that happens so 
frequently under all circumstances that it may be un- 
just to the profession to make them responsible for it. 
There have been instances of what are known as happy 
marriages brought about by these gents, whose mode 
of procedure is interesting. 

Peter Pindar lives in Chenango or Cataraugus county, 
and comes to town. He has often read Jacobs's or 
Johnson & Co.'s circulars and advertisements, and they 
have put the notion of a wife into his head. He has a 
small farm ; is 35 or 36 years of age ; is in ordinarily 
comfortable circumstances ; likes women ; but is shy, — 
afraid of them, indeed ; and consequently, he has never 
gotten along with them. It has often occurred to Peter 
that it would be convenient to have a wife ; but the 
trouble and difficulty, as he imagines, of procuring one, 
have always stood in his way. " If I could get some 
fellow to do the courting," Peter has said to himself, — 
never recalling, because he has never read, the sad story 
of Paolo and Francesca, — " I'd been a husband long 
ago. But this popping the question I'm not equal to. 



The Matrimonial Brokers. 591 

It requires a chap of more courage than I can muster." 
He reads over the advertisements until he has them 
all by heart. They impress him deeply. The oppor- 
tunity he has sought seems to be at hand. He goes to 
the broker's, and announces the object of his visit. The 
broker is always distrustful of strangers, fearing they 
are not sincere. But, after a few minutes' talk he sees 
that Peter is too unsophisticated to be guilty of a ruse. 
The broker soon puts his customer at ease ; says he 
knows a number of elegant and accomplished ladies 
who will suit him exactly." 

" Perhaps I don't know what an elegant and accom- 
plished lady is," observes Peter, " but I'm afraid it is 
not exactly the sort I want. I'd like a kind o' nice, 
good Avife, that wouldn't put on too much style, and 
look down on a fellow because he wasn't quite as good 
as her." 

" Certainly ; you need a good, domestic woman who 
loves her own fireside and is bound up in her chil- 
dren." 

" Well, if I had it my way," hesitatingly remarks 
Pindar, " I'd rather she wouldn't have any children that 
wasn't mine." 

" Precisely. I mean yours, my dear sir. I wish to 
say, when she had made you the happy father of a beau- 
tiful offspring, that she would devote herself to the 
family ; be an angel in her home ; a presence of love 
and peace, filling it with sunshine, and all that sort of 
thing." 

" Oh, yes, that is it," responds Pindar, caught by the 
cheap rhetoric of the broker ; " that's what I want, and 
will pay for." 

" I have a lady in my mind, now — I saw her this 



592 The Great Metropolis. 

morning — who will be all you desire. I shall charge 
you $10 for this interview. If we consummate the 
marriage, you will of course pay more. Our regular 
price is ," 

" I'll do the handsome thing. I'll give |100 cash 
down." 

" Come day after to-morrow, Mr. Pindar, and I'll tell 
you the result of my negotiation. Be here at 11 
o'clock." 

Soon as Pindar has gone, the broker takes a letter 
from a drawer, and reads : — 

'^ Dear Sir — I should be willing to accept a husband 
who could come well recommended ; who could provide 
for me handsomely ; who had good habits ; was well 
educated ; and was of a domestic turn. I have some 
reputation for beauty and accomplishment ; am young, 
although no longer a silly girl, and would, I think, be 
an ornament to a well-regulated household. 

" Sincerely, Bessie Baker." 

The broker drops a line to Miss Baker, soliciting an 
interview. She comes, and is not what might be antici- 
pated from her note. She is probably four or five-and- 
thirty ; has a thin face, faded blue eyes, high cheek- 
bones ; is freckled, and any thing but handsome or ele- 
gant. She talks rapidly ; and is intelligent, though not 
very delicate or sensitive. She has been a teacher and 
a seamstress ; has had a hard struggle with life ; and, 
seeing the broker's advertisement one day, was tempted 
to write him by way of experiment. 

An interview is arranged for her and Pindar in the 
private office. They meet, and are both disappointed. 



The Matrimonial Brokers. 593 

" I would never have him," she thinks. ^' I would 
not marry her for any thing," he says to himself. 

After half an hour's conversation, they find themselves 
mistaken. They rather like each other. He proves to 
be candid, upright, independent, good-hearted ; she, 
amiable, affectionate, loyal, truthful. When they have 
been acquainted three days, they believe they can get 
along together, Pindar pays his $100 to the broker most 
willingly ; takes Bessie Baker to Chenango as his wife ; 
and they have lived comfortably, rearing pumpkins and 
babies ever since. 

Not seldom, men who have mistresses they wish to 
get rid of apply to the matrimonial broker, and pay 
handsomely for the procurement of husbands. This 
branch of the business, it is claimed, requires unusual 
exertion and adroitness, and $500 is asked for the serv- 
ice. The man who is a candidate for marriage has no 
suspicion of the woman. She tells an ingenious story ; 
proclaims herself a widow — the broker indorsing all her 
stories — and, by her tact and shrewdness, completely 
deceives him. The marriage is consummated, and strange 
to say, is sometimes happy ; the wife resolving upon, 
and adhering to, a change for the better, after being 
invested with the dignity and bearing the responsibility 
of wedlock. 

The brokers are not men of very high principle. 
They are willing to make money in almost any way. 
When they have an application for a wife, they are cer- 
tain to supply the demand. They usually enjoy the 
acquaintance of a number of adventuresses — women of 
doubtful reputation and uncertain character. The bro- 
ker makes an appointment for them ; and, as they have 
city manners, style in dress, and much self-assertion, 

38 



694 The Great Metropolis. 

they are likely to make an impression upon some honest 
countryman's heart. He marries one of them, perhaps ; 
or, if he does not, he forms a relation that he afterwards 
regrets. He is threatened with exposure and punish- 
ment, and is compelled to compromise by liberal pay- 
ments. Sometimes he is surprised by a fictitious hus- 
band, who demands blood, but is finally persuaded to 
take money instead. The broker makes sure of his 
commission, and, after that, he does not concern himself 
about the future or the status of the couple he has intro- 
duced to each other. 

The unions made by the brokers are, as I have said, 
unfortunate for the most part. The parties enter into 
them without understanding each other's character or 
antecedents. They quarrel and go apart, denouncing 
the means used to bring them together. In a number 
of divorce cases in the courts, it has been shown that 
the couple seeking separation became acquainted through 
the matrimonial brokers. 

The broker is always a pretender and a trickster; 
tells more falsehoods than is needful for his trade ; de- 
scribes fine women he never saw ; boasts of his corre- 
spondence with the members of the best society ; con- 
tradicts and condemns himself — or would in dealing 
"with a man of the world — fifty times an hour. He is 
perpetually tempted to become a maker of assignations ; 
to dupe honest rustics ; to palm off demireps and wan- 
tons for ladies ; to swindle all who trust him ; and, I 
am sorry to say, he almost invariably yields to the 
temptation without a struggle. 

Recently, in New-York, matrimonial brokerage has 
largely passed into the hands of women, who advertise 
themselves as fortune-tellers and clairvoyant physicians. 



The Matrimonial Brokers. 595 

The brokers are growing less matrimonial, and more and 
more mercenary agents for assignation. Therefore they 
do not advertise as they did in the public prints ; but 
depend upon circulars and anonymous communications. 
They may change their tactics any time ; become less 
dishonest and unprincipled ; but, just now, the time does 
not presage improvement in a calling that can never 
have any legitimate success in the United States. 



h 



CHAPTER LXX. 
HERALDRY ON THE HUDSON". 

Many of our Republican Americans show such a silly 
passion for titles and titled persons, both at home and 
abroad, that it is not singular they have a secret longing 
for lineage of their own. Pretension having always been 
a characteristic, indeed a part, of vulgarity, it is very nat- 
ural that ignorant men who have suddenly grown rich 
should wish others to believe they have distinguished 
ancestors and patrician blood in their plebeian veins. 
Still, it would not seem probable that such persons 
would reveal their weakness ; though they might pay 
liberally for a coat of arms when they remember they 
began life in a coat without arms. 

New-York furnishes f^icilities for the good people that 
have been so busy in making a fortune that they have 
forgotten who their ancestors were. It has, drolly 
enough, an ofBce of Heraldry in Broadway, where the 
socially ambitious and the pecuniarily prosperous are 
informed, for a certain consideration, of the past glories 
of the family. Y^ou Avould imagine that any person who 
felt an interest in descent, and was anxious to have a 
noble lineage, would know more of his ancestors than 
entire strangers ; but it is not so. 

The managers of the Heraldry office are learned and 
ingenious gentlemen, who are generous enough to dis^ 



Heraldry on the Hudson. 597 

cover his forefathers. They have the history of all the 
nobility fresh in their memory. They can tell you all 
about the Norman line for five centuries ; about the 
Saxon kings ; about the very complicated Welsh nobil- 
ity, and even the still more mysterious Milesian royalty. 
If you have any doubt of their erudition, question them 
respecting escutcheons, tinctures, charges, the dexter, 
middle and sinister chiefs, the honor, fess and nombril 
points, pales, bends, chevrons, crosses, saltires, lines 
engrailed, invected, nebuly, raguly, and dancette, and 
you will be amazed at their bewildering acquirements. 
Gules, azure, sable, vert, purpure, and tenny, color their 
fluent talk. 

They can convince any man of ordinary vanity that 
he has the blood of the Plantagenets and Nevils in his 
veins, and that Vandyke and Lely portraits of his pro- 
genitors are looking out of costly galleries across the 
sea. I have said any man ; but any woman would have 
been apter, for women are by nature aristocratic, and 
care far more for lineage than do the sterner sex. 

The longing to be thought distinguished, it is gener- 
ally observed, is in proportion to the conviction that 
distinction is impossible. People talk most of their 
"family" who have none. John Jenkins, who started 
as a huckster, and grew rich in spite of stupidity, is per- 
suaded by Mrs. Jenkins to set up for a gentleman with 
generations of culture and luxury behind him. 

Mrs. Jerusha Murphy served a long and honorable 
apprenticeship as a servant girl, but when she married 
Murphy she changed her name to Juliette, and discov- 
ered that her husband was a direct descendant of one 
of the countless kings of Ulster. Murphy, it must be 
confessed, had degenerated somewhat, for he made his 



598 The Great Metropolis. 

appearance in New- York as a genius who long hesitated 
in a choice of callings between prize-fighting and bar- 
tending, but selected the latter, as it was more sooth- 
ing to his sensibilities. 

The Heraldry office has been established here for 
many years, and is a success. It is supported by the 
class of absurd people who are aspiring to a recog- 
nized position, who have more money than ancestors, 
and wish to exchange a little of the former for a good 
deal of the latter. The capital invested in the office is 
trifling. It requires only two or three men who can 
look serious over a farce ; a collection of old volumes 
full of shields, devices, and mottoes; a lot of genealogical 
trees hung up on the walls in antique-looking frames, 
and an uncertain number of histories and chronicles, 
including Froissart, Burke's Peerage, and kindred 
works. 

The business of the establishment is manasfed in this 
wise : — 

An applicant for a "family" enters and makes known 
his errand. A bland and smiling person asks the 
applicant's name. 

'•' Smithers," is the answer. 

*' Smithers, Smithers ! The Smithers are an old 
family, Gaelic originally, but the line has nearly died 
out. It's so with all the very old families. I'm glad 
to see one of their lineal descendants. What was your 
mother's name, Mr. Smithers?" 

" Flurry." 

" Flurry ? Ah, yes. Are you of the Scotch or 
English Flurrys ?" 

" Hang me if I know ! It was what I came here to 
find out. I don't know nothin' about my ancestors; 



Heraldry on the Hudson. 599 

but my wife says she's got 'em, and that I must have 
'em too." 

" Your wife is correct. The Flurrys are a very 
noble family of full Norman descent, De Fleury was the 
name before the Conquest, and for nearly a century after. 
I shall soon be able to trace your lineage from the 
battle of Hastings to the present time." 

" Gad, I'm glad of that. Mrs. Smithers'll give me a 
little peace now that she can git a crist on her carriage. 
She's bullragged me about the darned thing for a hull 
year." 

" The fee for insuring investigation is $20, Mr. 
Smithers. When do you want your tree ?" 

'' What kind o' tree ? There's no use o' plantin* 
trees 'afore our house. The worms allers kills 'em." 

"I mean your genealogical tree." 

" I never heard of that sort o' tree. Is it any thing 
like hick'ry ?'' 

" My dear sir, I mean the line of your ancestors ; 
who they were ; what they did ; what reigns they 
flourished in." 

'- Oh yes, I understand now. But I shouldn't never 
think of callin' that a tree." 

'' When would you like to have your lineage, your 
ancestors made out ?" 

*' Oh, any time will suit me. I've got the job off my 
hands, and the old woman can look after the rest of the 
rubbish." 

'' But it is well to fix a date. Do you care to have 
the papers made out before the end of next week ?" 

" No ; take your time, and do it well." 

^' Be sure we shall. The price of the work will be 
$100." 



600 The Great Metropolis. 

" Go ahead ; I'm willin'. Make us out a good first- 
class tree, and I'll pay you well. If you can find any 
pious old duck that only hurried or banged about gen- 
erally, put him in; for my wife's mighty fond of havin' 
some of that kind in the family. She calls it sufferin' 
for opinion's sake; though I can't see why the devil 
they didn't change their opinion if they got into any 
row about it." 

" No doubt the De Fleury's could boast of haughty 
prelates after the Reformation, who were earnest in 
their creed, even at the stake. I think I shall have 
no difficulty in showing you several illustrious mar- 
tyrs." 

" Well, do so. And if you can get hold of any chaps 
that died in war, spot 'em. We want a few of that sort 
too. At least Sarah Jane says so ; and she knows 
what's wanted much better than me." 

"Come on the 14th, Mr. De Fleury, and you'll know 
all about your honorable ancestors." 

" Smithers's my name." 

" Yes, now ; but the old family name was different. 
Call on the day named, and you'll find every thing pre- 
pared." 

Mr. and Mrs. Smithers call on the 14th, and she 
learns to her delight, but not to her surprise apparently, 
that one of her ancestors lost his life in defending the 
Black Prince at Crecy. 

Smithers objects to that. He says he don't want any 
"niggers " in his family, and won't have them. 

The man of escutcheons informs him the Prince was 
the eldest son of Edward III., and called black from the 
color of his armor, not of his complexion, w^hich com- 
poses Smithers, who pays his $100, and goes off in excel- 



I 



Heraldry on the Hudson. 601 

lent spirits, having heard there were no darkies among 
his ancestors, and because he believes this to be a 
white man's government. 

Mrs. Nancy Maginnis pays a visit to the office, and 
states to the manager that her family's genealogical tree 
had been destroyed by fire one month before (she is 
from Southern Illinois, and never knew who her grand- 
mother was), and she is anxious to have it made out 
again. 

" Maginnis ! That is a pure Norman name, running 
back to the ninth and tenth centuries. The Maginnises 
were of the Latin race, and were called Maginniensis as 
late as the battle of Temsford," is the declaration of one 
of the clerks after tumbling over half a dozen large and 
dusty tomes. 

" Yes, that is correct," she responds. " Maginnie- 
senses is the family name. My dear old grandmother 
told me of the title of some of our family in the time of 
the — I forget the king's name." 

" Ethelbert, I presume," is the ready reply. " He 
was one of the Anglo-Saxons and gave your line much 
trouble." 

" Yes, he did. He was a very wicked man, that 
Ethelbert, and I hate him even now." 

" I see you have the true Norman spirit. Madam, 
that never forgives an enemy of your house. I detect 
your Norman lineage in the peculiar curve of your nose 
(her nose is a confirmed pug), and the sparkle of your 
eye." 

" How skilled you gentlemen are in tracing gentle 
blood. Few persons could have told at first glance that 
I was of Norman extraction, and yet I am thoroughly 
such." 



602 The Great Metropolis. 

< 

" Oh, yes, Madam, we have so much to do with noble 
families we recognize them at a glance." 

Mrs. Maginnis pays her $100 with exceeding satis- 
faction, and shows her bill to all her common-place 
friends, for the next twelve months, when they visit her 
expensive but tawdry new stone-front in the Avenue. 

Such are the foolish persons who visit the Heraldry 
office. They pay $20 to $25 usually before the work 
is begun, and $100 after it is completed. The managers' 
labor is little more than a make-believe. They twist 
the name of any of their patrons into some form that 
figures in history, or is known in the peerage, and give 
lineage therefrom. Muggins is made De Mogyns ; 
Jones is made John or Jean, and derived from King 
John of France or England ; Thompson is made Temps 
fils, the son of Temps, a powerful baron, and so on to 
the last limit of absurdity. 

Who would believe people claiming to be sensible 
could be so cajoled by their vanity? They learn noth- 
ing of those who have gone before them ; but they may 
be certain there have been and are still fools in the 
family. 



CHAPTER LXXI. 

THE CHILD-ADOPTING SYSTEM. 

It seems as a rule that persons who don't want chil- 
dren have many, and that those who want them very 
much, have none. 

Nature is kind in most things ; but like fortune, she 
often gives to those who have, and withholds from those 
who need. " A poor man for children," is a proverb 
constantly verified. There is Hardtoil, who watches 
with anxiety and regret his steadily increasing family ; 
wishes he had fewer mouths to feed, and more to fill 
them. 

His neighbor Crabtree is wealthy, but childless. He 
sees the numerous progeny of Hardtoil, and envies him 
their possession. He would give half his property for 
one of the rosy-cheeked prattlers, and Hardtoil would 
have been happy if his last three babes had been born 
to the rich man over the way. 

If we could only exchange what we have and don't 
want for what we want and don't have, the sum of con- 
tent in the World would be largely increased. 

Where poverty and licentiousness are so common as in 
New-York, there will always be many parents who are 
unable to provide for their offspring, or unwilling to ac- 
knowledge them. Hence the baby-market is apt to be 
over-supplied, though at times the demand is fully equal 
to the supply. As we have no foundling hospitals here, 



604 The Great Metropolis. 

as they have in Paris, Moscow, .and other European 
cities, where infants can be left without any one even 
knowing who leaves them, parents get rid of them the 
best way they can. 

Desertion of children is very rare among Americans, 
but quite common among foreigners, who, first landing 
in New-York, make the City responsible for their sins, 
as if they were its own. Ignorant, indolent, reckless, 
and vicious often, they are indifferent to their children, 
and will abandon them without hesitation, when poverty 
presses or self-interest demands. It is they who leave 
babies at other people's doors; who expose them in the 
street; who abandon them to neglect, or even muxder 
them, to avoid the expense or trouble of taking care of 
them. 

When American women abandon their children it is 
usually from the shame of their begetting, though the 
feeling of maternity not seldom proves stronger than the 
sense of dishonor. Poor girls, without protection or re- 
straining influences, are always being led astray in a 
great city like this, and to their weakness is added the 
responsibility of their betrayer's sins. 

Every year increases the number of child-murders in 
New- York. Public attention has been called to it again 
and again. Foundling hospitals have been urged as a 
remedy for the evil ; but many of the timid-good have 
holy fears that the establishment will encourage the 
vice it is proposed to abate. From this apparently ab- 
normal condition of things the system of child-adoption, 
or adopting-out, which is designed to regulate the supply 
and demand, has arisen, and is carried on with consid- 
erable activity and profit. 

The morning papers contain advertisments every day 



The Child- Adopting System. 605 

of children wanted for adoption and to be adopted. The 
little unknowns are highly favored, if you believe the ad- 
vertisements ; such adjectives as " handsome," " bright," 
" intelligent," " interesting," " healthy," being applied 
to them. They are all represented as ideal babies, quite 
the kind that new mothers bear every day in the year, 
and which are, without exception, wonderful. 

When examined, they frequently contradict what has 
been said of them. The little beauties become flabby, 
blinking, ill-shaped, idiotic-looking creatures, that seem 
so self-disgusted that perhaps they would go back to 
where they came from, if they were not afraid they 
would find there more infants like themselves. 

Often, however, there are exceptions. The tiny 
strangers are evidently of fine lineage. You see the 
culture and superiority that preceded them, and in the 
delicate features trace the character of their parents. 
Very small children can rarely be accused of comeliness ; 
but there is a certain conventional standard of the qual- 
ity which serves the purpose. The baby's fate is de- 
termined by that. If it is less homely than the average 
of children, it is ten time? as apt to be adopted as if it 
fell below that average. 

The advertisements read something like this : — 

" Wanted — for adoption a male child of respectable 
parentage, not less than six months, nor more than two 
years old. It must be healthy, intelligent, and good- 
looking. Address X Y Z, station C, with reference, 
address, and particulars." 

" To 1)6 Adopted Out. — A beautiful, bright female child, 
healthy, quiet and interesting, eight months old, and 
every way desirable. Any gentleman and lady wishing 



606 The Great Metropolis. 

to adopt such a child must address in good faith, box 
No. -2,968, General Post-office with name, address, and 
circumstances." 

" To he Adopted Out. — A fine healthy male child, six 
weeks old, of respectable parentage. It can be seen at 

No. Bow^ery, between the hours of 2 and 5 p. m. 

Any gentleman or lady wishing to adopt such a child 
would do well to apply early, as the beauty and winning 
qualities of the babe necessarily insure its immediate 
adoption." 

" Children for Adoption. — Madame Pumpernickel, No. 
Sixth street, has a number of handsome, healthy. 



and promising children for adoption. Persons anxious 
to add to their families will consult their interests by 
calling on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Any 
lady or gentleman having children for adoption can find 
board and accommodations for them at Madame P's., and 
can make satisfactory arrangements to that end. All 
business communications strictly confidential." 

Sometimes an advertisement appears, that sounds 
like burlesque, but which is, no doubt, serious. This, 
for instance : — 

*' A lady and gentleman of education and position, 
but in straitened circumstances, from a sudden reverse 
of fortune, would be willing to part with a beautiful and 
fascinating female child, of two months old, to respect- 
fable people, who will agree to educate it carefully, and 
rear it in accordance with its birth. Its parents would 
not be deprived of their dearly-beloved babe, even iu 
the midst of their painful poverty, were they not on the 



The Child- Adopting System. 607 

point of leaving the City for the far West, where the 
advantages of education and proper accomplishments 
C'dn not be enjoyed." 
Or this :— 

" To be Adopted Out. — A lovely female babe, aged six 
weeks and nine days, of highly aristocratic parentage. 
It suddenly became an orphan, and was intrusted to a 
friend of the family, who has not the means of support- 
ing the child in the manner it has been accustomed to. 
Address Fashion, No. — , Oliver street. N. 13. None 
but persons of unquestionable respectability need apply. 
The best and strongest of references required." 

The infants of whom the most is said are usually the 
least attractive. Those whose parents are highly 
lauded are apt to prove of Milesian extraction, and to 
be in the market on account of the low price of babies 
and the high price of whisky. 

I have heard of several w^omen who, having gone in 
quest of " beautiful children," returned in a state of 
dissatisfaction bordering on disgust, and who afterward 
declared that all the claim the infants had to beauty 
consisted in bleared eyes, coarse features, and scrofulous 
affections. 

Madame Pumpernickel, whose genuine name I refraia 
from giving, is a professional adopter. There are a 
number of her calling in town, and the number is in- 
creasing. She keeps a baby's boarding-house and some- 
thing else. She knows illegitimate children are very 
numerous here ; that not infrequently their parents are 
persons of position, and that she can make something 
by aiding them to get rid of the evidence of their inti- 
macy. She is aware that after leaving the child they 



608 The Great Metropolis. 

will not inquire for it further. When they or their 
agent comes she consents to take the little thing for a 
certain consideration, which she regulates a(;cording to 
the means or position of the parties concerned. She 
sometimes has a dozen or twenty children on hand 
at a time; but she keeps the number down as much as 
possible. 

When any one wants to lease a baby with the madame, 
she either charges a fixed sum, or so much, with its 
board for a certain number of days added. The cus- 
tomary rate is $100 to $200 for taking the child, and 
$50 to $100 for disposing of it. When she can she 
advances her rate two or three hundred per cent., and 
so drives a good trade. Her interest is to get rid of the 
babies as soon as possible, and she consults her interest, 
regardless of humanity. 

Children seldom stay more than a week at Madame 
Pumpernickel's. If they are not sold they are almost 
invariably attacked with some violent illness that 
carries them olF in a few days. The very disagreeable 
infants, whom no one wants, are most exposed to fatal 
maladies. The madame says they die of some inherited 
ailment; but it is very well known she either starves 
them, or permits them to perish through neglect.' The 
fact is so notorious that complaint has been made to the 
police, who have arrested the professional adopters, and 
brought them before the so-called courts of justice, with 
which New- York is favored. Nothing could be proved 
against them. There were no witnesses, none procur- 
able at least, and the child-murderers were released to 
continue their traffic in infant life and death. 

The homes of the adopters are generally in some 
wretched quarter of the town, and in some building 



i 



The Child-Adopting System. G09 

where fresh air and healthful living are impossible. 
The rooms rented are meagerly, not to say meanly 
furnished; and in them are six, eight, or twelve infants, 
— little specters who look as if they would die at once 
and save trouble if they only knew how. Their keeper 
teaches them with such success that they soon wheeze out 
of their wretched little lives, and are thrust into a 
pauper's coffin. They lie in little beds and are tied in 
chairs ; cry day and night until they are too weak and 
hungry to cry any longer, when they fall to sucking 
their little soiled fingers, and not finding the dirt very 
nourishing, they wink and twitch their little pale eyes 
and slender Hmbs, and then stop winking and twitching 
forevermore. 

The adopters are ready to act as agents for the getting 
of babies if those they leave don't suit. They go to the 
private lying-in hospitals, whose patients are women 
that have not been married, and bargain for the babes 
that have been born, or advertise for the kind that is 
wanted. As the supply is greatly in excess of the 
demand, the children are found without difficulty. The 
adopters, as I have stated, are opposed to keeping on 
hand a supply that is not marketable, and a^ they 
receive none, and part with none, except for what they 
think a good price, their business can hardly be a losing 
one. 

The baby market has its fluctuations, like any other. 
In the Winter babies sell higher, because it costs more 
to take care of them ; they are more liable to die, and 
the demand is greater. During the hot months they 
decline ; for few citizens are in town, and strangers are 
not good customers. Usually the price of an infont is 
very variable ; for there is hardly any thing that the 
39 ■ 



610 The Great Metropolis. 

rightful owner would be so disinclined to sell, and any- 
other person would care so little to buy. 

But in New-York, quotations can be depended on to 
a large extent. A really good, well-conditioned, first- 
class babe will bring $100, when the market is not 
overstocked ; and a rather inferior but healthy and 
promising article, about $50. The infant trade, strange 
as it may seem, is growing to be regular here, and 
extending every year. It is not impossible, before the 
century is over, that we shall have children quoted on 
'Change, and prime, first, second, and third-rate ones as 
fixed in value as molasses, wheat, or flour. 



CHAPTER LXXII. 
BANKERS AND WALL STREET OPERATORS. 

After Vanderbilt, whose portrait has been given 
elsewhere, Daniel Drew is the most prominent figure in 
the banking quarter, and perhaps the most reckless. 
Though now in his seventy-second year, he is as ener- 
getic, persevering, shrewd (and unscrupulous, his 
enemies would add), as he was in the prime of life. He 
gives no sign of physical or mental failure, notwith- 
standing his constant activity and the perpetual strain 
upon his brain and nerves. 

Drew was born on a small farm in Carmel, Putnam 
county, and received a very limited education. He 
learned to read, write, and cypher while working on the 
sterile land his flither owned ; but beyond that cared 
very little for books. At fifteen he lost his father, and 
'at once determined to set up in life for himself— a step 
he was qualified for by his force of will, strength of 
character, and natural astuteness, very remarkable in 
one so young. He began by driving cattle to market 
and selling them, first in a small way, but gradually 
increasing his trade until it grew to be of considerable 
value. For sixteen or seventeen years he was a cattle- 
drover ; but, after he had reached thirty-two, he moved 
to this City, and established a depot for their sale, 
sending agents to the country to purchase stock. He 



612 The Great Metropolis. 

gained money rapidly, and, in 1834, made an invest- 
ment, with others, in a steamboat, which resulted in a 
great interest in the transportation of passengers on the 
Hudson River, 

Drew's line was so ably managed that it became 
popular, though it entered into competition with the 
lines owned by Vanderbilt and others. The rivalry 
was very, sharp for a long while, the steamers, at one 
time, carrying passengers from here to Albany at a 
shilling apiece. Drew was a large stockholder in the 
company formed by Isaac Newton, in 1840, which was 
the origin of the People's Line. He refused to dispose 
of his vessels when the Hudson River Railway was 
completed, though his friends advised him to, declaring 
he would be ruined if he did not. The road increased 
the patronage of the boats, as he had foreseen, and to 
this day, they are most desirable property. The Drew, 
finished year before last, is the finest steamboat that 
floats on any interior waters. She is more elaborate 
and gorgeous even than the filmed Bristol and Provi- 
dence, running between New- York and Boston. 

For ten or twelve years Drew was a banker and stock 
broker, having formed a partnership with Nelson Taylor 
and his son-in-law. He has been a daring and active 
operator in Wall street ever since, and is the most 
formidable opponent Vanderbilt has had. He lost 
$500,000 in the famous Harlem corner some years ago ; 
but he is not likely to be caught so again. He has 
long been a heavy stockholder in Erie and other promi- 
nent roads, and he plays bull and bear, and sells short 
and long, as his interest demands, quite confounding 
those who don't understand his multifarious shifts. 

Drew's foes accuse him of numerous "irregular" 



Bankers and Wall Street Operators. 613 

transactions ; but he claims that he does nothing that 
the Stock Exchange and Wall street morals do not 
sanction. He has a wide reputation for charity, having 
founded the Drew Theological Seminary at Morris, N. 
J., by giving it half a million of dollars, and having 
contributed to various religious and educational institu- 
tions. * 

Drew is in no way noticeable in face or figure. He is 
six feet high, slender, with limbs loosely put together, 
and rather awkward in his movements. He has a 
rustic appearance, is careless in his dress, and uncon- 
ventional in his manners. 

David Groesbeck, of the firm of David Groesbeck & 
Co., the well-known bankers in Broad street, is, like 
Drew, wholly self-made. He was born in Albany 
county ; had a hard struggle with fortune ; picked up a 
slender education, was apprenticed to a shoemaker, 
went to the capital afterward, and was clerk in a policy 
office. Failing to be satisfied there, he came to New- 
York, where he soon evinced such remarkable capacity 
for business that he attracted the attention of Jacob 
Little — so long the great bear of Wall street. He went 
into Little's office, and rose from one position to another, 
until he became the eminent banker's confidential clerk. 
He showed such remarkable financial ability that his 
employer advised him to go into business for himself, 
and lent him money for the purpose. For years Groes- 
beck has been a banker, and though he has failed 
several times, he has always preserved his reputation 
for honor, and his house is to-day one of the wealthiest 
in the City. He is not a reckless speculator; but he 
buys and sells stocks, and lends money on them ; some 
of his operations being immense. Last year he is 



614 The Great Metropolis. 

reputed to have made $2,000,000, and his private for* 
tune is estimated at $10,000,000. He is about fifty- 
two, tall, dark, and looks like an anxious, overworked 
man. He is liberal to a fault, and does many generous 
acts, of which few ever hear. 

Jay Cooke is known everywhere as the agent of the 
Government during the issue of the 7-30 and 5-20 bonds. 
By that loan he made a vast fortune, and is now one of 
great bankers of Wall street. He is a native of Ohio, 
having been born in Portland, now Sandusky, in the 
Summer of 1821. His father was a member of Congress 
(this is not mentioned to cast any discredit on the 
banker, but merely as a fact for which he can not be 
held responsible), and having the name of Eleutheros, 
which nobody could pronounce or spell properly, he 
determined to give his children short names. So the 
future financier was called Jay. 

The elder Cooke having suffered some adversity, and 
his son finding it out, determined to help himself. So 
he went to the store of an acquaintance in town, and 
without the consent or knowledge of his parents got a 
situation as clerk. He proved himself excellently quali-^ 
fied for business, and after acting as book-keeper and 
salesman in St. Louis and Philadelphia, he went, in his 
seventeenth year, into the banking house of E. W. 
Clark & Co. (in the latter city), of which he was after- 
ward a partner. Remaining in the firm twenty years, he 
retired, and in the early part of 1861 opened a banking 
establishment of his own with his brother-in law, Wm. 
G. Moorhead, under the name of Jay Cooke & Co. The 
financial ability of the new firm, displayed in negotia- 
ting different loans, attracted the attention of the Gov- 
ernment. Secretary Chase made Cooke & Co. the 



Bankers and Wall Street Operators. 615 

agents in Philadelphia for the three series of 7-30, and 
also special agents of the $500,000,000 5-20 loan. The 
risk was great, and large capital was required, but when 
it is remembered that | of one per cent, was paid, on 
the whole amount, the profit will be seen to have been 
handsome. The firm made several millions, and Cooke 
himself, now doing business at the corner of Wall and 
Nassau streets, is supposed to be worth $15,000,000 to 
$20,000,000. Cooke is very fresh in his feelings, and 
remarkable for his cheerful and genial disposition. He 
has the reputation of a very charitable man, having given 
freely to churches and colleges. He has a fine country 
seat on one of the islands of Lake Erie, near San- 
dusky, and dispenses a lavish hospitality. He has a 
bright, sympathetic face, agreeable manners, and a firm 
mouth that represents his character. 

Another firm that has made a fortune by acting as 
agents of government loans is Fisk & Hatch. Before 
the War they were both living on salaries ; Hatch being 
an officer in a Jersey City bank, at $1,200 a year. Soon 
as they began to negotiate the bonds they found them- 
selves on the high road to fortune. They now do a very 
large business in Nassau, near Wall street, and have 
cleared $1,000,000 a year. They are both young and; 
born financiers. They are much esteemed; do a strictly 
leoritimate business ; are conscientious members of the 
church, and liberal in their charities. 

August Belmont came here originally as the agent of 
the Rothschilds, and is, perhaps, better known as a poli- 
tician than as a banker. His office is at No. 50 Wall 
street, in a great, dingy granite building, where the 
largest transactions are made. He does most of his 
business on foreign account ; is very wealthy, and one 



616 The Great Metropolis. 

of the shrewdest of financiers. His wife is the daughter 
of Commodore Perry, and his home in Fifth avenue, cor- 
ner of Eighteenth street, is interiorly one of the most 
elegant and luxurious in town. His picture gallery alone 
is said to be worth $400,000 or $500,000. He is the 
President of the Democratic National Committee, and 
has always taken a very prominent part in politics. He 
is small, heavy set, with a short, thick nose, not inviting 
in appearance, nor conciliating in manner. Though a 
man of brain and character, he is not at all popular, 
nor does he wish to be — satisfied with his position and 
his unquestionable power. He is a German by birth, 
though he has French blood, and is often alluded to by 
those who like him not, as a " Dutch Jew." He walks 
lame, having been wounded in a duel while living on 
the Continent ; but in the peculiar understanding of 
Wall street he is not likely to be crippled. He is too 
sagacious and far-seeing to become financially halt. 

Brown Brothers& Co., 59 Wall street, is one of the most 
eminent houses in America. Their great marble banking- 
house is not surpassed by any similar establishment on 
this or the other side of the Atlantic. It cost over a 
million, and is an architectural ornament to the mone- 
tary quarter. The founder of the house, James Brown, 
is still in it. He is from the North of Ireland ; began 
life as a linen-draper, and having made a fortune, estab- 
lished the banking-house with his brother, who had 
been knighted for his services to the British Govern- 
ment. James Brown is regarded as a high type of 
business honor; is probably worth $12,000,000 or 
$15,000,000 ; is a devout Presbyterian, and prominent 
in numerous charities. He is nearly sixty, but in 
excellent health, and one of our most useful citizens. 



I 



Bankers and Wall Street Operators. 617 

James G. King's Sons have a very quiet, plain estab- 
lishment at No. 54 William street. James G. King has 
been dead for some years, and the business is continued 
by his sons. It is one of the oldest firms in the City, 
and in the very best standing. It deals largely in 
foreign exchange and grants letters of credit available 
in all the principal cities of Europe. The Kings are an 
old New-York family, and their commercial honor has 
never been tarnished. They are very rich, but wholly 
without ostentation. 

Leonard W. Jerome is quite a contrast to such men 
as the Browns and Kings. He belongs to the present- 
day school of bold, often reckless operators ; represents 
the fast financiers of the street. He was formerly a 
newspaper pubhsher in Rochester, but has for years 
been a prominent operator in stocks. He is shrewd, 
resolute, full of expedients and resources ; makes and 
loses fortunes every twelve months, but manages to 
float conspicuous on the financial tide. He is a noted 
person ; a man of the world and fond of pleasure ; 
dresses showily ; drives fleet horses ; has fast friends ; 
enjoys display ; gives expensive entertainments ; is 
extravagant and careless ; is called good-looking; lives 
with a free hand and a liberal heart in the sunshine of 
the passing hour. 



CHAPTER LXXIII. 
CHARLES O'CONOR. 

Charles O'Conor is very sensitive about the spelling 
of his name with a single n; perhaps because the double 
n is the common method. He is, as every one may 
know, whether he has one or two ns in his patronymic, 
of Irish descent ; his father having, in accordance with 
the established custom, quitted his native country on 
account of his connection with the Irish revolution of 
1798. 

Charles O'Conor was born here, in 1804, and in such 
narrow circumstances that he with difficulty obtained 
an education. He did not graduate, though his studi- 
ous habits and thirst for knowledge more than made up 
for the absence of a collegiate course. In his early 
youth he went to Steuben county ; but, after living 
there for several years, he returned to the City to study 
law, for which he had long had a partiality. He was a 
messenger-boy at first, and rose step by step to the 
position of an attorney. While a stripling in the office 
of a well-known firm of that day, he used to read Coke 
and Blackstone Avhenever he had the least leisure; bor- 
rowed law books, and pored over them at night. Those 
who observed his diligence and determination predicted 
success for him at the bar. Before he began to study 
regularly he was well-informed on many legal points, 
and often surprised his elders by his readiness and 



Charles O'Conor. 619 

knowledge. He was only twenty-one when admitted to 

practice. 

Soon after admission lie cherished political aspira- 
tions, and was anxious to be chosen Alderman for the 
Sixth AVard. The doubtful honor was refused hun at 
the polls, w^here he was gloriously defeated. His fail- 
ure of election troubled him sorely at the time, and 
impelled him to confine himself in future to his profes- 
sion. His application was extraordinary. He worked 
late and early, and for a period of ten years is said to 
have been in the courts or at his office sixteen hours out 
of the twenty-four. He had a hard struggle until he 
was tiiirty ; but his effective speeches, more remarka- 
ble for soundness than eloquence, at last brought him 
into notice. He took all the cases that were offered 
him, and did his best in every one of them ; and to this 
he ascribes his professional success. 

Havino- been chosen a member of the Constitutional 
Convention for revising the Constitution of the State, in 
1846, he showed great capacity, legal and political, and 
was much praised by the Democrats for his consistent 
course. Two years after he was a candidate for Lieu- 
tenant-Governor, and would have been appointed Attor- 
ney-General by President Pierce, if General Marcy, of 
this State, had not already been in the Cabinet. 

For the past twenty years O'Conor has been em- 
ployed in some of the most important cases in the 
country. He set out as a criminal lawyer, but aban- 
doned that practice as soon as he could command one 
more lucrative and dignified. The Mason Will, in the 
courts for fifteen years, and the Forrest Divorce, are 
among the most famous cases in which O'Conor has 
been eno-afed. In the former he made what was called 



^6"b' 



620 The Great Metropolis. 

his ablest speech, and gained his cause ; the decision 
being given in favor of the heirs. In the latter he was 
opposed by John Van Buren (on the side of the trage- 
dian), who was more brilliant than his opponent, though 
O'Conor was certainly more profound. 

O'Conor has a very large practice, but in his sixty- 
'fourth year he is inclined to rest from his labors. His 
income is $70,000 or $80,000 a year, and he lives in 
elegance at Fort Washington, where his entertainments 
are numerous and expensive. His wife, who is fond of 
society, is said to be amiable and accomplished, and to 
preside with grace over the hospitalities of her husband. 

Charles O'Conor's career on the subject of slavery has 
been consistent if not admirable. He has from the first 
been opposed to the negro in every way. He has been 
against his emancipation, against his education, against 
his right to the franchise, against every effort for his 
advancement. It is said he deeply deplores the aboli- 
tion of slavery, which he considered a beneficent and 
humanizing as well as a peculiar institution. It is sin- 
gular a man of OConor's learning and intellect can hold 
so narrow and irrational a view ; but he has been accus- 
tomed for years to looking at the subject from one side, 
and the indiornation his course has excited amono- the 
Republicans and Radicals has, it is presumed, only 
strengthened his convictions. 

In person, O'Conor is of medium height, erect, and 
rather slender. His face is after the Irish pattern, in- 
dicating strength and sternness, will, and resolution to a 
point of dogged obstinacy. His eye is dark and pene- 
trating, and his hair and whiskers are very gra}". When 
speaking in public, he is dehberate and measured at 
first; but warming up with his subject, he is fluent and 



Charles 0' Conor. 621 

rapid, and often severely sarcastic. On the wliole, he 
seems of a cold temperament, though he is very agree- 
able and entertaining in private. He is an intellectual 
egotist, and holds his opinions so firmly that, while he 
is"" willing to discuss questions, there is no hope of 
inducing a change in the position he once has taken. 



CHAPTER LXXIV. 

JAMES T. BRADY. 

James T. Brady, another prominent lawyer of the 
City, is personally better knojvn than O'Conor, because of 
his continual appearance before the public of Manhattan. 
Like O'Conor, he is native here, having been born in the 
lower part of town ; though he is so fond of dweUing 
on the wrongs of Ireland, and lauding her sons to the 
stars on the rostrum, that many suppose him a boy of 
Blarney. He is so dear to the Irish heart of this City 
for his sympathy with, and the abundant rhetoric ad- 
dressed to Erin, that he has been chosen President of St. 
Patrick's Society, and is always invited to any and 
every festive board at which the Green Isle is to be glo- 
rified. ^ Between his life and O'Conor's there are m^ny 
similarities. They were both poor, both pre-determined 
to the bar, both engaged for years in criminal cases, 
both successful, and both the architect of their own for- 
tune. While Brady's professional reputation stands 
very high, he has gained very few of his cases. It is 
said he takes too much personal interest in his clients ; 
makes too many appeals of a flattering character to 
judges and juries; declares too often and too particu- 
larly the innocence and miscellaneous virtues of those 
he is called upon to defend. That habit, as well as his 
subtle distinctions on points of law, excite suspicion and 
create confusion, and he therefore fails of success. 



James T. Bradt. 623 

Brady's face and fame are most familiar at dinners, 
and suppers, and public meetings of all sorts. Ills forte 
lies in after-dinner speeches. The presence of boon 
companions, the drinking of toasts, and the flow of wine, 
act upon him rapidly and favorably. Naturally sensi- 
tive, fervidly rhetorical and fond of display, he is in his 
element in the midst of the jingling of glasses and pop- 
ping of champagne. He needs little provocation to re- 
spond to any sentiment, and he always brings applause 
from his hearers. If he had a melodious instead of a 
harsh voice, he would be more interesting; but his 
admirers forget his tones in his glowing periods and 
flashes of humor. He has the Irish temperament— 
a passion for verbal floridity and sensational color- 

incr and never lets a theme suffer for want of repre- 

sentation. 

Brady is the most persevering speaker; has the 
largest gift of continuance of any orator in Manhattan. 
No public occasion is thought to be complete without him. 
He figures in all presentations ; at all public dinners ; 
at all private suppers ; at all public meetings ; at all 
formal receptions. He must, on an average, deliver one 
hundred addresses a year. A sarcastic journalist says 
a reward of $10,000 has long been offered for the discov- 
ery of any public or private occasion, within a radius of 
fifty miles of New-York City, taking Union Square as a 
center, on which James T. Brady did not speak ; and 
that up to the present time the reward haj never been 
claimed. 

Brady lays claim to the earliest recognition of " moral 
sanity " as the cause of crime ; Huntington, the f\imous 
" genteel " forger, having been the client in whose 
defense he first made that a plea. 



624 The Great Metropolis. 

In politics Brady has been a Democrat, though a less 
consistent one than O'Conor. During the Rebellion he 
favored the North ; supported President Lincoln's policy, 
and was appointed to an important commission under 
that administration. He feels a deep interest in the 
drama ; is a regular habitue of the theaters, and has 
contributed several minor pieces to the stage that had a 
certain local popularity. He was one of the founders of 
the Dramatic Fund Association, and is still a prominent 
and zealous member. He has written for the press, too, 
at various times, and continues to have an inclination to 
divert himself as an imp of the ink-bottle. 

Brady is eminently social and sociable ; has a grega- 
rious and convivial cast; is a member of two or three 
clubs ; relishes amusements of almost every kind, and 
is a good specimen of a jovial bachelor. He is about 
;five feet eight in height ; well built, slight but compact 
in frame ; has a broad and intellectual forehead, a bright 
eye and very mobile features. He is rather graceful, 
and, when his face is lighted up, I have known him to 
be called handsome. He is a fluent talker, and would, 
as I have said, be a very agreeable one but for the dis- 
cordant tones of his voice which he has struggled in 
vain to correct. He is so well liked by all classes that 
he may be called one of the most popular men in New- 
York. 



CHAPTER LXXV. 
FERNANDO WOOD. 

Fernando Wood is one of the shrewdest of New- York 
politicians, and they have always been remarkable for 
their astuteness. He was born in Philadelphia, in 
1812, and is said to have set out in his metropolitan 
life as the proprietor of a small drinking saloon in 
Greenwich street, though he was by profession a cigar- 
maker. He afterward became a clerk in a counting- 
house, and was for years a ship-owner and merchant. 
He is a self-made man, owing little to education, but 
naturally intelligent and having an intuitive knowledge 
of character. Very early he showed capacity to manage 
and control his fellows, and he has improved upon this 
with his increasing years. During the time he was 
engaged in mercantile business, his enemies say he did 
not deal fairly with his partner ; but his admirers, of 
whom he has many, proclaim that he has been slandered. 
The firm of which he was a member ultimately failed, 
and Wood entered into political life. 

For years he was very active among the Democrats, 
and became a power in the municipal government. His 
record was not enviable. He was charged with all 
manner of corruptions, and when he was nominated for 
Mayor, in 1857, a howl of indignation went up from the 
Opposition, That did not prevent his election, however? 
and, when elected, he disappointed his enemies and 

40 



626 The Great Metropolis. 

disgusted his friends. Instead of being the corrupt 
official that was expected ; instead of being a mere tool 
in the hands of the party that placed him in office, he 
acted independently and honestly ; established various 
reforms, and proved himself one of the best and most 
popular Mayors the City had ever known. For some 
months he continued his excellent course. He had 
gained the warmest admirers among his bitterest foes. 
The journals that had abused him exhausted eulogy 
upon him. Prayers were even offered up for him in 
fashionable churches. But he was bent upon disappoint- 
ing the City in another way. 

All of a sudden the improvements he had made were 
overridden by the worst corruptions. All that had 
been anticipated of his bad government was more than 
realized. The City Hall fell into the hands of the 
worst men in New-York, and the indignant public 
clamored in vain for reform. The Municipal Police, as 
they were called, became so insupportable that the 
State determined to supplant them with police of its 
own appointment, and did so. There was serious 
trouble ; fighting and riots ensued before the Metropol- 
itan Police were firmly installed, and on Mayor Wood 
was thrown the entire responsibility of the public dis- 
turbances. He was compelled to submit ; but during 
the remainder of his term of office, he did all he could 
to make himself obnoxious to the Opposition, which, 
indeed, he had no cause to love. He went out of the 
Mayoralty amid the execrations of those who at first 
were loudest in his praise. It was thought that he 
could never be elected to the office again ; but he has been 
three times Mayor, and without redeeming his reputa- 
tion. He was defeated the last time he ran for the 



Fernando Wood. 627 

place ; but he still boasts that he can get it when he 
likes. He has been thrice in Congress, and has just 
been elected a fourth time. 

He is resolute, energetic, and believes the end 
justifies the means in politics, and that the end is 
success. His influence with the people, particularly 
with the Irish, is very great. They seem to have a 
kind of blind worship for him, and they cleave to him 
through good and evil report. Even when they are in- 
censed against him, as they are sometimes, he has but to 
go among them and talk with them to bring them over 
to his side. 

Whatever his defects, Wood is an extraordinary man ; 
has abundant faith in himself, and cares nothing for 
the abuse that is heaped upon him. Coolness is super- 
abundantly his. In Congress, when torrents of invective 
have been poured upon his head, he has sat in his chair 
stroking his moustache and looking more indifferent 
than any of his fellow-members. From the class of men 
he controls many fancy him a rude, coarse fellow of the 
Sixth Ward politician type. They are greatly mistaken. 
Fernando Wood, with his gray hair and mustache, 
sober suit of black, tall, erect, lithe figure, quiet, almost 
solemn manner, would be mistaken for a clergyman. 
He is perfectly self-possessed under all circumstances ; 
speaks softly and deliberately ; dresses neatly, and would 
be prepossessing were it not for a suggestion of coldness 
and selfishness that no ease or polish of manner can remove. 

Wood lives in good style up town; has a liberal 
income — having laid the basis of his wealth while he 
was Mayor in 1857 by buying at advantageous rates 
real estate sold for taxes. He is fifty-six, of vigorous 
constitution ; seems to grow more cunning with age, and 



628 The Great Metropolis. 

deserves the sobriquet of the Fox, which has been fixed 
upon him. He was long distinguished as the head and 
front of Mozart Hall, which he originated in opposition 
to Tammany. But Tammanv was too strong for Mozart, 
which is now little more tL^.i. a name. It fears Wood, 
however, and has consented to his going to Congress, 
where perhaps he may expiate some of his many polit- 
ical sins. 



CHAPTER LXXYI. 

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN. 

George Francis Train is as difficult to locate as to 
analyze. He claims a residence in St. Petersburg, 
London, Paris, San Francisco, Omaha, Chicago, New- 
York, and Boston; but, as those cities are not con- 
veniently contiguous to each other, it is questionable, 
should he declare he had a residence in each and all of 
them, if he would be permitted to vote, even on Man- 
hattan Island. Public opinion is much divided respect- 
ing Train. Some persons think him a madman ; others . 
a fool. He is neither. He knows what he is about 
better than most men ; but his passion for notoriety is 
such that he is constantly misunderstood. He believes 
in notoriety, in self-representation, in self-assertion, in 
self-appreciation, to the fullest. With him, egotism is, 
if not the highest of virtues, the first of domestic chari- 
ties. He holds there is no success without egotism, and 
that success in some form is what all are struggling for. 
Self conscious and self-loving as he is, he does not desire 
to encroach upon the right of others to be and appear as 
vain as they choose. He is convinced that modesty 
" does not pay," as he would express it, and that it is 
in most cases a sham. He is violently opposed to 
shams, and prefers Nature, however disagreeable, to the 
most pleasant make-believe. Not long ago, he spoke to 



630 The Great Metropolis. 

a writer of reputation about a literary work he had com- 
pleted. " It does not amount to any thing," said the 
author ; " I did it for lack of something better." 

" You don't really think so," replied Train. " If you 
had had that belief, you woil dn't have undertaken the 
work. Never decry your own performance anyhow. 
Let other people do that. People take you at your own 
estimate ; and it's good policy to put a high value upon 
yourself if you want to sell well in the market." 

Train is an American in excess ; an American raised 
to a higher power, to put it mathematically ; an Ameri- 
can run mad. He is a highly exaggerated type of our 
people and country ; and has all the energy, boldness, 
independence, irrepressibleness, that are popularly sup- 
posed to belong to the Anglo-Saxon race. For nearly 
twenty years he has been before the public in protean 
shape, and no doubt for twenty, aye, thirty years more, 
he will insist upon not being forgotten while voice and 
lungs, pen and ink, type and paper, are to be used or 
had in the World. 

Train was born in Massachusetts, in or near Boston, 
and an erratic fellow from childhood. He was thought 
very visionary and fantastic in his youth, and, though 
unmistakably clever, seemed to have no concentration, 
no continuity of purpose. Before he was of age he was 
famous in the City of Notions. He had unusual power 
of expression, orally and graphically ; was constantly 
talking, speaking in public, or writing. He rambled 
abroad; returned, and published several volumes, among 
which were " Young America in Europe," and " Wall 
Street Abroad." In all of his volumes he glorified 
Young America, which he claimed to represent; criti- 
cised and censured the old monarchies, and predicted 



George Francis Train. 631 

tlie universal difFusioa of republican principles. Ilis 
books were read ; sometimes admired ; oftener laughed 
at. They had cleverness, but were flighty, incoherent, 
disconnected, and induced many persons of a different 
temperament to believe their author a little cracked. 
Then he went abroad again ; made extraordinary and 
ridiculously extravagant speeches that confirmed the 
impression his books had given. 

He set to building street railways in London; but 
after great boasts of teaching John Bull how to travel, 
John Bull got out injunctions, stopping the work ; and 
to this day there is not a foot of street-railway in the 
British metropolis. 

Train has been in every European capital, and 
wherever he is, he is bound to be heard from. He 
never keeps quiet ; but fluctuates between the Baltic 
Sea and the Pacific coast. His superlative nervous 
force and activity of brain impel him from one country 
to another, from ocean to ocean, like the driving-wheels 
of a locomotive. 

He has tried almost every thing, and not long ago 
became interested, with Thomas C. Durant, the Vice- 
President, in the Union Pacific Railway. He has had 
many advantages there in buying property and locating 
towns, and is reputed to have made a great deal of 
money. He confesses to have done so, and frequently 
says : " I have taken a turn at many things. I wrote 
for the newspapers, and people called me a fool. I 
made speeches, and they called me a fool. I became 
author, and they did the same. I built street-railways, 
and they still called me a fool. Then I went to making 
money, and since then nobody has called me a fool." 

I am afraid Train is mistaken. It is so much easier 



632 The Great Metropolis. 

to style any one a simpleton than to understand a wise 
man, that a great many persons have not changed their 
opinion of the erratic New-Englander. Train claims to 
have originated the Credit Fonder in this country, which 
is a source of great profit to him in the building of the 
Pacific Road. No one can imagine all the enterprises 
and public movements he assumes to be the parent of, 
and with justice, perhaps ; for he is more likely than 
any man living to project a macadamized road to the 
moon or a pleasure excursion to the Bottomless Pit, for 
the notoriety of the thing, if for no other reason. 

Train is an amiable, good-hearted, and good-looking 
fellow, who would be very interesting if he would con- 
fine himself to one subject more than ten seconds at a 
time. He overwhelms you with talk on all themes, and 
conversation with him is little else than a rambling 
monologue, in which you are an entirely superfluous 
figure. He is of medium height, erect, graceful, has 
brown, curly hair, gray eyes ; affects blue, brass-buttoned 
coats ; has an interest in all existences under the stars, 
but most in George Francis Train ; and is one of the 
most remarkable men of the time, with more good and 
capacity in him than he will ever get credit for. 



CIIAPTEE LXXYII. 



FANNY FERN, 



Almost every one has heard of Fanny Fern, though 
very few know who Mrs. Eldridge or Mrs. Parton is ; 
and many will be surprised to learn they are all three 
one and the same person. 

" Fanny Fern" Eldridge-Parton was born in Portland, 
Maine, July 11, 1811 — a fact I have no hesitation in 
stating, because she is one of the not numerous women 
who have no objection to telling her age. Her father, 
Nathaniel Willis, editor for many years of the Boston 
Recorder, removed to that city when she was six years 
old. She was educated at Hartford, Conn., being a 
pupil of Catherine E, and Harriet Beecher, now the 
famous Mrs. Stowe. Sara Payson Willis — her maiden 
name — was a very rollicking, even hoidenish girl \ gave 
her teachers no little trouble, and teased her school- 
fellows most unmercifully. She was very popular, 
however, from her fine sense of justice and her gener- 
osity of heart. Not a few of her companions seemed 
to be really in love with her, particularly the younger 
and weaker of the class, who went to her for protection 
and championship, as if she were a man. 

Numerous stories are told of her mad- freaks and mis- 
chievous tricks, which earned for her the well-deserved 
title of a tomboy. The Beechers have many reminis- 



634 The Great Metropolis. 

cences of Sallie Willis as a school-girl. Among other 
things, she used to be wishing constantly that she was 
a boy ; and those who knew her then were often of the 
opinion that she nearly had her wish. 

Soon after leaving school she was married to Charles 
Eldridge, cashier of the Merchants' Bank of Boston. 
She lived in comfort and content with him, and twice 
bore him children — daughters ; but at his death his 
affairs were found to be involved, and she was soon 
thrown upon her own resources. She tried to obtain a 
situation as teacher or saleswoman; offered to do any 
thing to put bread into her own and her children's 
mouths, but she was unsuccessful, and finally, as a last 
resort, concluded to write. 

This was in 1851, and Boston was not then a very 
good literary market. Having shown cleverness with 
her pen while a girl, she composed a number of sketches, 
stories, poems and essays. She offered them to all the 
Boston journals, daily and weekly. The editors acknowl- 
edged that they had merit, but they would not pay for 
them. She wanted money more than fame, and declined 
to have them printed for glory. After severe struggles 
with poverty, and when she was on the eve of aban- 
doning the literary field, she found an editor who gave 
her fifty cents for a sketch. It attracted attention ; 
was copied in other journals, and induced the editor to 
give her a dollar for the next effusion. She continued 
to write over the signature of Fanny Fern, and at the 
end of a few months she had gained a decided reputation. 

As soon as she became known, she removed to the City, 
began writing for the weeklies, and made Fanny Fern 
a familiar name all over the country. Robert Bonner 
about that time purchased the Ledger^ formerly a com- 



Fanny Fern. ooo 

mercial weekly, and immediately engaged Fanny to 
write regularly, at $100 a column. Thenceforward 
her reputation and independence were assured. Her 
writings were copied everywhere. Drinking saloons 
and steamboats were named after her, which is indu-^ 
bitable evidence in America of enduring fame. She 
made a collection of her sketches, and published them 
in a volume, with the title of " Fern Leaves." The 
book had a sale of 70,000, and realized to her $8,000 
or $10,000. She afterwards published another series 
of her contributions to the Ledger, followed by a novel 
— '' Ruth Hall"— which was really, though not osten- 
sibly, an autobiography. In it she severely censured 
and ridiculed her brother, N. P. Willis, then the well- 
known editor of the Home Journal, under the name of 
Hyacinth ; showing him to be a vulgar pretender and a 
selfish snob. Of the taste of such a performance, what- 
ever her provocation, there can hardly be two opinions. 
But the novel sold, and she had no compunctious visitings. 
In 1856 she was a second time married to James 
Parton, the distinguished biographer. She is still a 
contributor to the Ledger, and in consideration of her 
writing for no other publication, Bonner gives her 
$5,000 a year. She lives very comfortably in Eight- 
eenth street, and in her fifty-eighth year is as pleasant 
and vivacious as a girl of eighteen. She is round and 
plump ; has light hair, laughing, blue eyes and a mobile 
face. She is a rapid and interesting talker, a strong, 
self-poised, large-hearted woman; and though her 
writings are often lacking in delicacy, they are free 
from sham, earnest for the truth, often eloquent, always 
pointed, and have done much good by their strong 
appeals to women and their brave defense of right. 



CHAPTER LXXVIII. 

TWO STRONG-MINDED WOMEN. 

Susan B. Anthony, especially since the establishment 
of the Revolution, has become one of the feminine nota- 
bilities of the country. She is a native of South Adams, 
Mass., though her parents removed to Monroe county, 
near Rochester, while she was a child. She is of Qua- 
ker descent, and the Quakers love peace ; but she has 
departed from the faith of her fathers, and grown enam- 
ored of all forms of spiritual warfare. She was a teacher 
for many years ; afterward a lecturer on temperance and 
anti-slavery. Since her girlhood she has been radical 
in every thing. She early burst the trammels of old 
forms ; became an uncompromising Abolitionist and an 
enemy of common and ancient creeds. She was one of 
the first advocates of woman's rights in their fullness. 
For twenty years she has talked, written, and spoken in 
favor of feminine suffrage, and will have little to desire 
when that becomes the law of ihe land. She is the pub- 
lisher of the Revolution, and in each of its weekly issues 
has several vigorous articles on her favorite theme. She 
is a thorough come-outer, in the strictest sense of come- 
outerism; but she is sincere, liberal, sympathetic, and, 
if strong-minded, is tender-hearted. 

She has chosen her course from no love of notoriety 
or sensation, but from principle and conscientious deter- 



Two Strong-Minded Women. 637 

mination to do right. Her life is full of practical chari- 
ties. No one of her sex, however humble, degraded, or 
outcast, ever failed to find in her a comforter, helper, 
and friend. She is tall and slender ; has a good, though 
not handsome face; is very energetic; talks a great deal, 
but very well. She is unmarried, a vigorous and logical 
speaker and writer, and, though she has been much mis- 
represented and ridiculed, as all women are who have 
courage to step out of what is called their " sphere," she 
is gentle, courageous, and true ; has a high purpose in 
life^ and has done a good work. The World might be 
better off if it had a thousand Susan Anthonys ; this 
City certainly would. 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton is even better known than 
her co-laborer on the Revolution. She has stumped the 
West; lectured and made speeches throughout the 
Northern States for woman's rights and woman's suf- 
frage, of which, since Lucy Stone's marriage and retire- 
ment to New-Jersey domesticity, she is, perhaps, the 
most distinguished advocate in the Union. Her name 
is printed in the London Times, the Paris Moniteur, and 
the Independance Beige. She has sufficient celebrity- 
notoriety, if you will — to gratify the vanity of any of 
her sex ; and were it not for the heart she has in her 
work, no doubt she would long ago have retired from a 
field many have thought uncongenial to her. 

Mrs. Stanton {nee Elizabeth Cady) is a native of 
Johnstown, N. Y., the daughter of Judge Cady, a gen- 
tleman of position and ability. She was married to 
Henry B. Stanton, a young and rising lawyer, in her 
twentieth year ; and not long after went to Seneca Falls, 
in this State, where she resided for thirteen or fourteen 
years. It was there she first felt an interest in the 



638 The Great Metropolis. 

cause of woman's rights. She made her earliest speech 
there, I think, and was an intimate of Mrs. Bloomer, a 
resident of the same town, after whom the short skirt 
that has been so much laughed at was christened. Mrs. 
Stanton soon became acquainted with Lucy Stone, Abby 
Kelly Foster, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette L, Brown, 
Frances D. Gage, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and the whole 
tribe of feminine agitationists. They received her with 
open arms and encouraging tongues. She was taken 
into their innermost circle ; made their counselor and 
confidante ; was launched upon a " career," and dis- 
covered she had a " mission." Her friends were 
alarmed, some of them shocked, that a lady so accom- 
plished and highly-bred should ally herself with women 
who violated all the conventionalities and departed from 
all the customs of '^ good society." 

Mrs. Stanton had made up her mind, however. 
Though naturally very sensitive and shrinkingly mod- 
est, she resolved to brave public opinion, and do what 
she had convinced herself was her duty. She plunged 
into the Rubicon; she crossed, and Rome was — freer 
than ever. From that time to this she has been untir- 
ing in her exertions for the cause. She firmly believes 
every thing will come right when women vote ; that 
when they go to the polls, and take part in the elec- 
tions, the country will approach near to Plato's ideal 
republic, and More's Utopia. 

For some years she has lived in New- York ; was the 
founder, and is the guiding and ruling spirit of the Bev- 
"olution. She is the opposite of the popular notion of a 
strong-minded woman. Instead of being angular, cadav- 
erous, awkward, shrill-voiced, vinegar-faced, she is bux- 
om, blithe^ pleasant. Her hair, which is prematurely 



Two Strong-Minded Women. 639 

white, clusters about her well-shaped head in silvery 
curls. Her eyes are large, blue, and bright ; her fea- 
tures regular, and her complexion fresh. She is a very 
agreeable— many call her a fascinating— woman, and 
is so full of hfe and humor that it is difficult to be in 
her society without feeling the charm of her presence. 
She has several children, is a most exemplary wife and 
mother, and is widely and deeply loved by all who know 
her. She has a fine mind ; is logical and trenchant in 
argument; and one of the most persevering and able 
advocates her cause has ever had on this side of the 
Atlantic. 



CHAPTER LXXIX. 
PETER COOPER. 

Peter Cooper's name is familiar all over the country 
on account of his persevering efforts to educate and ele- 
vate the poor and laboring classes, and from the erection 
of the Cooper Institute for the instruction of the work- 
ingmen of the country. Cooper was born in this City 
in the winter of 1791, and is of P^evolutionary stock, 
his father and grandfiither having served as officers 
during the struggle. His father was a hatter at the close 
of the struggle, and Peter assisted him in the shop, and 
had a hard experience, as his parent was in straitened 
circumstances, and had a large family to support. The 
boy was very anxious to learn, but he was unable to 
attend school more than half of each day during a 
single year, which was all the regular education he ever 
received. When seventeen he was apprenticed to a 
coachmaker, and he followed the trade for some years. 
He afterwards engaged in the manufacture of patent 
machines for shearing cloth ; then of cabinet ware, and at 
last he entered into the grocery business in Burling 
Slip. He conducted the last trade for some years with 
profit ; but retired from it to embark in the manufacture 
of glue and isinglass, which he has carried on ever 
since — a period of more than thirty years. He has 
been interested for a long while in iron manufactures, and 



Peter Cooper. 641 

in his works near Baltimore he built, after, his oAvn 
designs, the first locomotive ever constructed in the 
United States. He has shown much interest in the 
extension of the telegraph, and is a stockholder and an 
officer in the Atlantic Cable Companies. He has served 
in both branches of our Common Council, and what is 
extraordinary, he proved himself a most honest and 
honorable member — an example that few have been 
tempted to imitate since his time. The difficulty he 
had in obtaining an education made him solicitous of 
securing advantages for others, when he had become 
rich, and Cooper Institute is the fine result of a self- 
promise made forty years before its erection. The 
Institute embraces a school of design for women, 
evening courses of instruction for mechanics and 
apprentices, especially as respects the application of 
science to the practical affiiirs of life, a free reading- 
room, galleries of art, collections of models of inventions 
and a polytechnic school. The building cost $500,000, 
which is not far from half of Peter Cooper's fortune. 
He is still healthy and vigorous and no one would 
believe he was near his eightieth year. He is a 
peculiar-looking and noticeable person, under the 
medium size, with a sharp, thin visage, a profusion of 
brown hair, very little gray eyes, always wears gold 
spectacles, and seems as amiable, kind, and generous as 
he really is. No one ever doubted Peter Cooper's 
honesty. He is popular with all classes, and is 
never seen in public without eliciting applause. He 
has lived a true life ; is a genuine democrat ; an earnest 
friend of the people. 

41 



CHAPTER LXXX. 



GEORGE LAW. 



A VERY different man from Peter Cooper is George 
Law. Once a famous personage, he has so sunk out of 
sight, of late years, that the great public has almost 
entirely forgotten him. lie was born in Washington 
county in this State, and his parents being poor, he 
came to the Metropolis to seek a livelihood. It is said 
he worked for his passage and arrived here penniless. 
He was in his first teens then; but being very stout and 
hardy he worked on the docks, and in warehouses for 
several months. At the end of that time he had saved 
a hundred dollars. With that sum he began to barter 
and trade, and soon increased it to $1,000 — the hardest 
amount to get, millionaires tell us, though the statement 
is not always true. He had a talent for making money 
out of other people ; but he remained in obscurity till he 
was fully thirty. The first known of him by the public 
was his appearance as contractor for building High 
Bridge for the Croton Aqueduct. He made the job 
profitable, and soon obtained other contracts from the 
City that rendered him prosperous. He purchased an 
interest in different ferry and street railway companies, 
and became an operator in Wall street, where his 
shrewdness served him to advantage. He was not a 



George Law. 643 

bold speculator, but had the sagacity to buy and sell 
at the right time, and rarely lost. 

At one time the Herald — in the campaign of 1852, I 
think — nominated Law for the Presidency, and gave 
him the sobriquet of " Live-Oak George," which long 
adhered to him. No one except Law imagined for a* 
moment the journalistic weathercock in earnest ; but he 
was greatly flattered by the nomination, and really 
cherished aspirations for the White House. 

During the Lopez expedition in Cuba he bought a 
lot of muskets, and placed them on board the Grapeshot. 
The vessel was seized while lying in port, on the charge 
that the muskets were intended for the filibusters, 
which no doubt was true. Law made a fierce protest 
against the seizure, and appealed to the courts. While 
the case was pending the attempted revolution failed, 
and Lopez was garroted. The fire-arms afterward proved 
of very little value, and if they had been used in Cuba 
would have been more destructive to their bearers than 
to the enemy. A great deal was said and written at 
the time about the George Law muskets, and their 
w^orthlessness grew to be a proverb. That venture was 
one of the very few in which he was not successful. 
He has the reputation of having made money out of 
whatever he has touched, and he ought to make it, for 
he is totally regardless of the feelings or comfort of 
others. He is still a large owner in ferries and railways, 
conducts them to please himself, and whistles at the 
public. 

George Law is for himself first, last, and always, and 
he is, therefore, one of the most unpopular men in the 
Metropolis — a fact he cares nothing about so long as his 
coffers are full, and his digestion is perfect. His con- 



644 The Great Metropolis. 

science is easy, for it lies in his bank account. The 
good he does must be in secret since it rarely becomes 
known. 

Law has a handsome house in Fifth avenue, and is 
probably worth $5,000,000, though it would not be 
imagined from his appearance and manner that he would 
be admitted to his own house, or that his income was 
$1,000 a year. He must be about five and sixty now ; 
has a strong constitution and muscular frame, and 
promises to be active and interest-calculating for thirty 
years yet. He is very large vertically and horizontally ; 
dresses shabbily ; has coarse features ; resembles a car- 
man more than a millionaire, and is personally known 
to few. He is frequently to be seen walking and driving 
about on his private business ; occasionally appears at 
Fulton Market in quest of oysters, which he swallows 
voraciously as if he were more savage than hungry ; and 
now and then figures as a vice-president of some public 
meeting, which he never attends. Such is Live-Oak 
George, who, as has been said, is a self-made man, and 
worships his creator. 



CHAPTER LXXXI. 

PETER B. SWEENEY. 

Peter B. Sweeney has recently risen into prominence 
as the Great Mogul of Tammany Hall. He is considered 
one of the shrewdest of Democratic politicians ; makes 
politics his trade, and thrives by them. He is of Irish 
extraction, though native here, and seems to be a man 
offeree more than fineness. He is a lawyer by profes- 
sion ; but he has quitted law for more lucrative, if not 
more disinterested pursuits, within the magic circle of 
the City Hall. He is the present City Chamberlain, 
and has made himself famous by paying over to the 
municipal government certain monthly sums of interest 
that have heretofore been kept by the incumbent of the 
office. The proceeding is so unprecedented that few 
New^- Yorkers are willing to believe that any man capable 
of such conduct is acting from disinterested motives. 
Until recently, a bank President has usually been made 
the Chamberlain, and the bank has received the deposits 
of the City without interest. The balance to the credit 
of New-York is often $20,000,000, and it is estimated 
that the interest on the account is not infrequently 
$200,000 per annum. It is alleged that Sweeney does 
not give more than one-third of the interest to the Treas- 
ury ; but that he pays any proportion of it voluntarily, 



646 The Great Metropolis. 

and when there is no law to compel him, should certainly 
be interpreted to his credit. 

As a wire-puUer, caucus-controller, and manager of 
men, he is said to eclipse his astutest predecessors. He 
is the power behind the throne in the City Hall, and 
the avowed champion of the Ring. No Democratic 
body in this region can get along without Sweeney ; and 
no Democratic caucus is complete without him. He is 
steadily increasing his influence, and in this stronghold 
of the party will find it to his advantage to stay. He 
is wealthy — probably $1,000,000 would not cover his 
fortune — in the prime of life ; large, dark-haired, dark- 
eyed, swarthy-complexioned ; feels proud of his political 
importance, and may long to have engraven on his 
marble monument in Greenwood, *' Here lies the late 
leader of Tammany Hall." 



CHAPTER LXXXII. 
DISTINGUISHED CLERGYMEN. 

Nearly all of our well-known members of the clerical 
profession are doctors of divinity, except two of the 
very ablest, — Henry Ward Beecher and Octavius B. 
Frothingham, who have peremptorily declined to accept 
the degree. 

After Beecher, Edwin H. Chapin, the Universalist, is 
the most popular and famous. Born in Union village, 
Washington county, in this State, Dec. 29, 1814, and 
receiving his education in a seminary at Burlington, Vt., 
he began preaching, in his twenty-third year, to a congre- 
gation of Universalists and Unitarians in Richmond, Va. 
Remaining there three years, he went to Massachusetts; 
filled a pulpit in Charlestown for six years, and in Bos- 
ton for two ; when he was called to the Fourth Univer- 
salist church in this City. He soon took high rank as a 
ministerial orator, and ever since — a period of twenty 
years — his reputation has been increasing. 

His church, called the Divine Unity, was for many 
years in Broadway, but is now torn down, and a new and 
handsome edifice has been built in Fifth avenue. His 
congregation is very large, and hi'S reputation attracts 
many strangers ; so that, long before the hour of serv- 
ice, it is next to impossible to get a place. His style of 
eloquence is fervid and impassioned, abounding in orna- 



648 The Great Metropolis. 

ment and metaphor. He seems to lay himself out, with 
pen and voice on particular passages ; and he is often 
so theatrical that his audience is prompted to applaud. 
He is in great demand as a lecturer, and can easily earn 
$8,000 to $10,000 a season by appearing before lyce- 
ums. His salary is $10,000 a year, which, with such 
perquisites and presents as all popular clergymen 
receive, gives him a large and comfortable income. 

Chapin is quite portly, very genial and amiable, but not 
at all clerical in appearance. He is very liberal in creed, 
and one of the best of our pulpit elocutionists and rhet- 
oricians. He has published several volumes of sermons 
and lectures, and is fond of displaying his scholarship. 
He is very agreeable personally, and numbers his 
friends by hundreds. 

The Rev. Henry W. Bellows, Unitarian, resembles 
Chapin somewhat, and is near him in reputation. He 
is a native of Boston, and now in his fifty-fifth year. 
He graduated at Harvard before he was nineteen, and 
completed his theological studies at Cambridge. 

During the late Unitarian national convention, he 
delivered the opening sermon, which was an elaborate 
expression of his beliefs and desires. He severely, even 
bitterly, censured many of his brethren ; denounced 
speculation as dangerous and pernicious ; declared his 
faith in Jesus Christ, our Saviour, the only firm rock on 
which to stand ; and, for two hours, spoke as if he had 
been a rigid Baptist or Presbyterian. In the conven- 
tion he attacked the Rev. 0. B. Frothingham, without 
mentioning his name, and entered upon issues that would 
have rent the church asunder, had not oil been ingen- 
iously poured upon the troubled theologic waters. 

He became pastor of the First Congregational church 



Distinguished Clergymen. 649 

here in 1838, and now presides over All Souls, irrever- 
ently called the Holy Zebra, Fourth avenue and Twen- 
tieth street. He was for many years the principal 
writer of the Christian Inquirer, which he was largely 
instrumental in founding, and now contributes to the 
Christian Examiner. He is a popular lecturer, and an 
eloquent, though rather monotonous, speaker, with many 
mannerisms. Rhetoric is his forte, as it is Chapin's, and 
he makes the most of it. He represents the orthodox 
class of Unitarians, and has for a long while been tend- 
ing to the usual forms of theologic worship. He has 
several times threatened to withdraw from the Unitari- 
ans ; nor is it strange, — for between himself and those 
who claim to be the most liberal, there is almost as 
much difference as between Universalists and Cal- 
vin is ts. 

Ten or twelve years ago he created a sensation by 
advocating theaters and theatrical amusements. The 
broad church applauded, and the orthodox were indig- 
nant, and all over the country the theme was earnestly 
discussed by religious and secular journals. He was 
here regarded as the exponent of the broad church; but 
since then he has grown very conservative, and it has 
been rumored again and again that he was about to dis- 
own all connection with the Unitarians. 

Bellows is tall, dark-complexioned, bald, rather patri- 
archal in appearance, and, if not opposed, gracious and 
gentle. His salary is $10,000, and his circumstances 
all that can be reasonably desired. He has written a 
great deal, though most of his writings are pamphlets 
on current topics, on which he took a decided stand for 
or against the question at issue. 

The Rev. William Adams is the best known of the 



650 The Great Metropolis. 

Presbyterian clergymen in the City. He is the pastor 
of Madison Square church, one of the most fashionable 
in the Metropolis, and his congregation has the reputation 
of the wealthiest in the country. Bankers, politicians, 
merchants, and professional men of note, are members 
of his church; and it is stated that more prominent 
citizens can be found there than in any other place of 
worship in Manhattan. He has many enthusiastic 
admirers, who consider him exceedingly eloquent. It 
is a pity his eloquence can not induce his hearers who 
operate in Wall street, and pull political wires, to be 
more honest and upright in their dealings. 

Adams is a native of Connecticut ; but while a chilJ, 
his father — a teacher of distinction — removed to Massa- 
chusetts. William was always of a religious turn, and 
exhibited an interest in the Bible and theological works 
at so tender an age as to awaken surprise and delight 
among his father's friends. He was regarded as a 
pious prodigy, and frequently entered upon discussions 
with ministers of reputation, and confounded them with 
his questions and his arguments. 

He came to New-York thirty years ago for the benefit 
of his health ; and, while spending the winter here, was 
induced to accept the pulpit of the Broome Street church. 
For the last fourteen years, he has been in Madison 
square, and he attracts every Sunday a very large 
and highly cultivated congregation. 

He is very unlike Beecher, Bellows, or Chapin, in the 
style of his sermons and delivery. He has a horror of 
what is known as sensationalism, and consequently his 
sermons are simple and severe, but forcible and 
convincing. He is a man of large and varied reading, 
biit like a man of true culture, he shows it in his 



Distinguished Clergymen. 651 

thought instead of in display of needless learning. He 
has the usual $10,000 salary, and could have thrice 
this sum if he would accept it He has written several 
volumes, which breathe a spirit of eloquent devotion, 
and have large sales. 

He is considered a model of what a clergyman should 
be in appearance, bearing, and even in costume. He is 
said to exercise a very wholesome influence on young 
men, who are much attached to him. He has, from his 
early years, been interested in foreign missions and in 
bible societies and has been intimately acquainted 
with eminent men zealous and energetic in the cause 
of Christianity. Though not far from sixty, he is still in 
the vigor of health, and has years of earnest and valua- 
ble work before him. 

The Rev. H. B. Ridgaway presides over St. Paul's, in 
Fourth avenue, — the most fashionable and the wealthiest 
of the Methodist churches in the United States. 
The Methodists pay smaller salaries than the other 
denominations, and Ridgaway receives but $5,000, which 
is the maximum rate. According to the rule of the 
church, no minister preaches more than three years to 
the same congregation, which prevents it from forming 
a strong attachment to its pastor, as it might otherwise 
do. Ridgaway is young, — not yet forty. He is small in 
stature ; dark and pale ; yet looks as if he had studied 
hard, and led a very abstemious, if not ascetic life. He 
is neither showy nor brilliant, but is a close reasoner, 
and gives entire satisfaction to his flock. He formerly 
had charge of a congregation in Baltimore, and is a new, 
though by no means unwelcome, citizen and clergyman 
in this paradise of preachers. 

The Rev. Henry C. Potter is the new pastor of Grace 



652 The Great Metropolis. 

church. He is the son of the eminent bishop, and has 
already obtained a strong hold upon the fashionable 
worshipers at that most fashionable temple. He is 
about forty, and well qualified to please his fastidious 
and critical congregation. He is called handsome by his 
feminine parishioners. He has an intellectual, student- 
like face ; clear, expressive eyes ; and fine brown 
whiskers, worn after the English style. He has a rich, 
well modulated voice, and reads the litany in an im- 
pressive and artistic manner, that delights his hearers. 
After the death of the Rev. Dr. Taylor, Grace found 
much difficulty in supplying his place. It offered 
$15,000 as salary, but no one came that was deemed 
suitable. It then reduced the sum to the regular rate, 
and Potter, having been put upon trial, was pronounced 
the man after whom the church had been seeking. 
The parsonage is exceedingly pleasant, and it and all the 
surroundings of Grace are so desirable that the bishop's 
son may well regard himself as fortunate. 

The Rev. Thomas Armitage, among the Baptist 
clergy, is, perhaps, the most conspicuous. He holds 
divine service in the Fifth avenue Baptist church — a 
handsome and imposing edifice, that is always weU 
attended. He is a prime favorite. His style of com- 
position is more picturesque than that of most ministers 
of his creed, and his elocution graceful and winning. 
He has been called theatric; but that adjective is 
rarely applied to men who are not open to the suspicion 
of eloquence. He is about forty-five has a heavy frame 
and a large face, which looks larger from the entire 
absence of whiskers or mustache ; wears his hair long ; 
and reminds you somewhat of Beecher in his persona] 
appearance. He has a very nervous manner, that 



Distinguished Clergymen. 653 

shows intensity and earnestness, but does not add to 
the efFect of his oratory. 

Rev. Octavius B. Frothingham is one of the three 
Unitarian clergymen, and the most radical, in the City. 
He represents the most liberal wing of his church, as 
Dr. Bellows does the most orthodox. He is a come- 
outer, and the most eminent of the kind. Creed and 
dogmas are of no importance to him. What a man does, 
rather than what he believes, is the essence of his 
Christianity. He has faith in culture, in just deeds, in 
humanity, in self-sacrifice, in devotion. Where one's 
work is honest, earnest, noble, the worker can not be 
seriously wrong, whatever his form of belief or disbelief. 

Frothingham is a native of Massachusetts, a graduate 
of Harvard ; studied theology in the divinity school at 
Cambridge, and has been regarded as a disciple of 
Theodore Parker, many of whose opinions, and all of 
whose sympathies, he shares. Still he can not be justly ^j 
called a Parkerite j for he accepts no man's views until 
his mental process makes them his own. 

He is eminently an individual ; does not claim to-day 
that he knows what ho will think or do to-morrow. He 
believes in progress, development, purity, charity, and un- 
selfishness : these are the sum of all religion. He is entire- 
ly democratic in his opinions, and sternly opposed to forms. 
For a long while he was unwilling to have a church, 
preferring to preach in public halls, on account of what 
he conceived to be the greater freedom of such places. 
But he was overruled by his congregation, who built a 
neat and elegant edifice in Fortieth street, known as the 
Third Congregational Church, where service is regularly 
held. His hearers are not many ; but they are among 
the most intellectual and cultivated in New- York. 



654 The Great Metropolis. 

A number of journalists and artists, authors and pro- 
fessional men go there, and they listen to his discourses 
sympathetically but critically. No one who hears 
Frothingham can doubt he is a thinker, however much 
he may fail to take the view of the hearer. The minister 
is rather a small man, about forty-six, with a nervous, 
eager, fine face, excellent manners, and. thoroughly well 
bred because reposeful air. He has long, wavy hair, 
sprinkled with gray ; dresses neatly, even elegantly, 
and gives the impression of fastidiousness and daintiness 
in every thing. 

He often speaks extemporaneously, and very well. 
His written sermons are vigorous, eloquent and polished. 
He is very quiet, rarely gesticulating, but reads from 
his manuscript in a soft, sweet voice the convictions of 
his heart, the freshest ideas of his brain, gracefully and 
classically expressed. He is thought by many affected, 
but he is not, though it is probable that what were 
mannerisms at first are natural now. He is a clever 
writer; contributes to the Radical, the Nation, and 
other periodicals. He has been accused of coldness, 
but his life is earnest, generous, and beautiful ; 
and he has warm friendships, that have continued 
through years. 

Rev. Samuel Osgood is the pastor of the new Church 
of the Messiah, one of the most costly in town, in Park 
avenue, but not in the best taste. Osgood seems to 
stand midway between his two Unitarian brothers. Bel- 
lows and Frothingham, neither so conservative as the one, 
nor so radical as the other. He is not very individual 
in his views, and inclines to form and ceremony almost 
as much as an Episcopalian ; wearing a black silk gown 



Distinguished Clergymen. 655 

during service, and surrounding himself with all that 
cfin add to his ministerial dignity. 

He is from Massachusetts also. He is the successor 
of Dr. Orville Dewey, and has been in the pulpit here 
for nearly twenty years. He has read a great deal, — 
more than he has digested perhaps ; is receptive rather 
than creative, and is thought to have modeled himself 
somewhat, though unconsciously, upon Dr. Bellows. 

His sermons are committed to memory, after being 
written with great care, and abound in quotations, 
learned allusions, studied alliteration, and all the tempt- 
ing vices of ornamental rhetoric. He is thoroughly 
self-appreciative, and would be more effective and inter- 
esting if less self-conscious and apparently affected. He 
is very popular with his congregation, and has decided 
talent, though no genius. He has written a number of 
books, and contributes freely to the magazines. Among 
his writings is an autobiography under the title of 
''Mile Stones on Life's Journey," which attracted much 
attention, and sold largely. 

He is very fond of writing and speaking, and has 
delivered numerous orations before colleges, societies, 
and on public occasions. He is of the $10,000 salary 
number, and has a A^ery handsome property. He owns a 
pleasant house in town and a fine country seat at Plain- 
field, Conn., where he spends the Summer in picturesque 
and luxurious retirement. A lucky man is Samuel 
Osgood. He enjoys the material things of life as well 
as the spiritual things ; is fond of society, and is the 
companion of artists and litterateurs as often as his 
clerical duties, which are numerous, will permit. 

Rev. Morgan Dix, of Trinity, is the apostle of High 
Churchism; has chants, surpliced singers, and all the 



656 The Great Metropolis. 

pomp of ritualism, and would have still more forms if 
he had his own way. He is the son of General Dix, 
a man of good ability, an agreeable preacher, and dear 
to the heart of his congregation. 

Rev, Stephen H. Tyng, Jr., is the antipodes of Dix. 
Not many months since he drew upon himself the condem- 
nation of a portion of the Episcopal Church for entering 
the pulpit of a Methodist clergyman in New Brunswick, 
N. J., and his trial elicited the comments of the press 
far and wide. That trial was an excellent thing for 
Tyng's reputation ; for ever since he has been among 
the most talked-of clergymen in the City. His congre- 
gation believed that he was persecuted ; regarded him 
as a martyr, and formed a new and deeper affection for 
him than they had ever experienced before. 

The younger Tyng is an earnest and eloquent advo- 
cate of Low Churchism ; as thoroughly democratic in 
his feelings and sympathies as Dix is aristocratic. He 
has of late been preaching to the people in the street, as 
a protest no doubt against chants, and choristers, and 
the intoned service of Trinity. 

His open-air sermons have been largely attended, and 
his popularity has greatly increased. He is the rector 
of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Madison avenue and 
Forty-second street. He is slight, pale, rather emaci- 
ated, intense and eager in temperament, speaking with 
force and animation, and compelling the attention of his 
hearers. 

The Episcopalians have various grades and degrees of 
creed and ceremony. E-ev. C. W. Morrill, of St. Al- 
bans, in Lexington avenue, is the extremist in his ritual- 
ism. At that chapel, incense, miters, croziers, banners, 
and all the elaborate forms of Catholicism, are to be 



Distinguished Clergymen. 657 

seen. Morrill has the title of Father. He has estab- 
lished auricular confession, and there is little difference 
between his and the Roman service, save that his is in 
English, Many of his fair parishioners are devoted to 
him, and never weary in performing any tasks or sacri- 
fices he may intimate as desirable. He is a large, strong 
man, the opposite of an ascetic in appearance, positive, 
imperious at times, and yet full of soft persuasion, and 
very winning in his manners. 

Rev. F. C. Ewer, of Christ's Church, Fifth avenue 
and Thirty-fifth street, has distinguished himself by de- 
claring Protestantism a failure. He is trying to do what 
Pusey did ; and yet he does not go half so f^ir in cere- 
mony as ^' Father" Morrill. He is a large, dark man, 
broad forehead, deep-chested ; has a vigorous mind, and 
seems to hold his congregation by the strings of their 
hearts. 

Rev. Chauncey Giles, of the New Jerusalem Church, 
Thirty-fifth street, between Fourth and Lexington ave- 
nues, is a very able man and an effective reasoner. He 
is a native of Massachusetts ; went West and taught 
school ; was stationed in Cincinnati for some years, and 
is now firmly established here. His congregation, less 
than five hundred in number, is enthusiastic about him, 
and would not part with him on any terms. He is of 
massive mold, conveying the impression of both physi- 
cal and mental strength; has profound and varied culture, 
and deserves his reputation of a scholar and thinker. 

Archbishop McCloskey is much loved by an immense 
population of Catholics. He is an earnest but quiet 
prelate, appearing particularly so in contrast with his 
predecessor, Archbishop Hughes, to whom controversy 
was as the bread of life. He is a pleasant, urbane, and 

42 



658 The Great Metropolis. 

learned gentleman, and has many warm friends among 
all sects. He is a fluent and an interesting talker, and 
universally esteemed. 

Samuel Adler is the Rabbi of the Jewish Temple, No. 
112 East Twelfth street, the handsomest and costliest 
synagogue in the country. The Hebrews who worship 
there are of the most liberal sort, and he is held in high 
repute for his learning. He has all the marked features 
of his race, and is a man of fine mind and great force 
of character. 



LXXXIII. 



JOHN ALLEN, THE WICKEDEST MAN. 

John Allen, the notorious wickedest man, of No. 
304 Water street, having had his day, has fallen almost 
entirely out of the public eye. It is singular what effect 
a superlative will have upon the community. John 
Allen's dance-house had been visited and described again 
and again by correspondents and magazine-writers ; but 
they did not give his name or address, nor have the 
audacity to apply the superlative to him. When an 
unknown writer told Allen's story in plain language in 
a sensational monthly, Allen became notorious, and the 
biographer shared his subject's notoriety. Of course, 
every one wanted to know about the wickedest man in 
New-York, where there are thousands of such, each one 
of whom thinks he deserves the distinction. Conse- 
quently everybody read the sketch, and a crowd of 
people, both residents and strangers, hurried to Water 
street, to see and talk to the moral monster. 

Allen, a singular compound of conceit and coarseness, 
was delighted to find himself a hero, and wishing to 
continue the character, declared to the wistful clergy- 
men who crowded about him begging him to reform, 
that he had experienced a change of heart, and was 
determined to lead a new life. Allen had always been 
inclined to theological discussion ; and considered him- 



660 The Great Metropolis. 

self a sort of preacher because he had brothers in the 
pulpit. He was quite familiar with the Bible ; and to 
repeat its passages, interlarding them with obscene 
stories, to mix religion with his rum, and quote Genesis 
over his gin, were his favorite recreations. Allen should 
have been a Methodist exhorter — his mind and temper- 
ament impelled him in that direction ; but the influence 
of early associations and something of the unregenerate 
evil of his nature drove him upon bar-rooms and dance- 
houses for a livelihood. He was in his element with 
the clergymen about him, and when they proposed 
prayer-meetings in his establishment he leaped at the 
chance of continuing the sensation. 

For weeks No. 304 was the scene of fervid relisrious 
exercises. Curiosity filled the place, where there was 
abundant opportunity to point a moral and adorn a tale. 
Allen was alluded to as a monument of God's mercy, 
and as a brand snatched from the burning. Several of 
the unfortunate women he had employed became affected 
through their unstrung nerves with the spirit of the 
hour, and from tippling wantons became weeping Mag- 
dalens. The wickedest man enjoyed all that excessively. 
It appealed to his love of excitement, and he was heard 
to say privately that the dance-house was a d — d fool 
to the prayer-meeting. 

After awhile religion began to cloy upon Allen. He 
craved a new sensation, and concluded to lecture. He 
went to Stamford, Conn., with an essay he had paid 
some New-York reporter to write for him, and had a 
select and sympathetic audience of six. Then he visited 
Bridgeport, and was about to make confession of his 
past errors and present repentance, when he had a first- 
class attack of delirium tremens. 



John Allen, the Wickedest Man. 661 

After that Allen retired from the lecture field ; re- 
turned to this City ; proclaiming his intention to resume 
his original business. The police notified him if he 
did, that they would arrest him and his girls every 
night. He defied them, and opened his dance-house 
again. The police kept their word. They arrested 
Allen and all his supernumeraries, though he was no 
more guilty than dozens of other dance-house keepers 
in that neighborhood, who are never molested. But that 
is the way the Metropolitan police have of doing things ; 
and as it is much less mischievous than many other of 
their ways, perhaps it is unwise to complain. They had 
formed a prejudice against Allen, who, they professed, 
had shocked their moral sense by his duplicity, and 
they would have locked him up every time he gave his 
fandangoes. That he did not like. So he off'ered his 
notorious den for sale, and went to Connecticut, where 
he could enjoy his delirium tremens without the 
interference of the police. 

The last has been heard of John Allen. He is an 
exploded sensation. Water street is not likely to see 
again his broad forehead and rather intelligent face, his 
keen blue eye, light hair, thin jaw, and spare side- 
whiskers, above a well-knit, compact frame. He may 
turn up as a preacher or as a prize fighter, — it is about 
an even thing, — but his career as a rum-seller and dance- 
house keeper is over. He can repose upon his laurels ; 
for he has made $100,000 by his shameful calling, and 
declares he doesn't want to make any more. 

What is termed the religious awakening, however, 
continues in Water street. No. 304 is shut up; but at 
No. 316 daily prayer-meetings are held under the au- 
spices of the Howard Mission, and are productive of 



662 The Great Metropolis. 

much good. Many of the papers and people ridiculed 
the attempt at a great revival, and referred to John 
Allen's backsliding as an evidence of its hollowness ; 
but the effort, in addition to its praiseworthiness, has 
borne excellent fruit. No one will say that prayer- 
meetings, even if their success be limited, are not better 
than common prostitution, constant intemperance, and 
riots of sensuality. Let the prayer-meetings continue! 
They may help to purify the atmosphere of Water 
street, and fill its darkest places with rays of hopeful 
light. 



CHAPTER LXXXIV. 

MARK M. POMEROY. 

Mark M. Pomeroy has recently become a citizen of 
the Metropolis. The extraordinary success he had with 
the La Crosse (Wis.) Democrat convinced him that he 
needed a larger field and a more appreciative audience 
than a Western town could give him ; and therefore he 
is here. On this propitious Island he has set up his 
new daily, the Democrat^ and will soon issue his weekly 
from the same office. He says he has prospered beyond 
his most sanguine expectations, and that the Democrat 
is already firmly established. His non-admirers affirm 
that he is losing money rapidly, and that he must fail ; 
that the notoriety of his paper made it sell for a few 
weeks, but that it attracts no attention now. Pomeroy 
is a notability. A violent and reckless course, that would 
have ruined most men, seems to have helped him to 
fortune. His perpetual and violent abuse of President 
Lincoln, of the Army, of the War, of the Union cause, 
was quite enough to kill his paper, which has, however, 
flourished greatly. If it had not, he would not have 
had the boldness to come to New- York and issue a daily, 
where there are journals in excess. 

Pomeroy was born in Lawrenceville, Penn., on Christ- 
mas Day, in 1833; his father being a New- York mer- 
chant, still living, and in California. His mother died 



664 The Great Metropolis. 

when he was an infant, and an uncle adopted him. He 
lived on a farm and worked hard till he was seventeen, 
being reared according to the severe and somewhat 
somber teachings of the Presbyterian church, which his 
mature writings Seem to have reflected. In his eighteenth 
year he went into a printing office in Corning, in this 
State, and there mastered the art preservative. He 
afterward went to Waverly, and then to Canada West, 
where he remained for several years. In 1857 he 
removed his local habitation to Wisconsin. He there 
embarked in several newspaper enterprises, and was at 
one time local reporter of the Milwaukee Neivs. When 
he undertook the Democrat, at La Crosse, he found his 
place. There, and with that, he became known far and 
wide ; all his political opponents quoting his opinions and 
sentiments to injure his party, and most of his allies 
consigning him to perdition for his audacity. 

Pomeroy is better known as " Brick " than Mark, the 
sobriquet having been given him, it is said, by the 
Louisville (Ky.) Journal, because of his clever execu- 
tion of a local sketch copied into its columns. He is an 
energetic and persevering fellow, vindictive and bitter to 
the last degree. One of the most earnest and persistent 
efforts of his late life has been to prove that Abraham 
Lincoln, whom the whole Nation believes to have been 
both a great and a good man, and who was one of the fore- 
most characters of the Republic, is irrevocably damned, 
or, as the Democrat tersely expresses it, has gone to 
hell. Pomeroy's opinion may be entitled to weight, for 
he speaks like an accredited representative of the place, 
and as if he felt sure of finding the noble martyr there. 
Another purpose of Pomeroy's existence is to abuse 
General Butler, to whom he gave the title of the Beast, 



Mark M. Pomeroy. 665 

and whose name he has associated with the plunder of 
spoons He has always declared Butler's father was 
hanged for piracy, though Butler himself has no knowl- 
edge of the fact. Pomeroy, in his private life, is said to 
be amiable, and strongly attached to his friends, which 
is probable, as he is certainly attached to his foes. He 
is a mild-looking man, bald above the forehead, blue-eyed, 
of the medium height, rather heavy and not very pre- 
possessing features. 

He is reported to have many of the physical virtues ; 
to abstain from liquor, profanity, and tobacco ; though 
I can't help believing that a man who has so much 
abuse to heap upon the dead Lincoln and living Butler 
can hardly find time to indulge in the smaller vices I 
have named. Pomeroy is self-made, a perpetual clam- 
orer for Democracy and the rights of the People, and 

on the best of terms with his maker. 

I 



CHAPTER LXXXy. 
EMINENT BUSINESS MEN. 

Few business men in New- York who have shown 
judgment, energy, and prudence have failed of success. 
Nearly all of them have accumulated fortunes in a few 
years ; for in this great center the path of good manage- 
ment soon strikes the road to prosperity. Once to get 
a foothold here is to grow rich, because the moment a 
house is fairly established trade flows in upon it from 
every part of the country. The merchants of the Me- 
tropolis are truly merchant princes in wealth and their 
luxurious style of living. Hundreds who are never 
heard of oif the Island, and who are little known on it, 
reckon their property at $500,000, $600,000, $800,000, 
and often by more than $1,000,000 ; nor is it strange, 
for Broadway, Church, White street, and West Broad- 
way, supply the markets of the United States. 

One of the oldest and best known firms is Grinnell, 
Minturn & Co. This shipping house is located at No. 
78 South street, and though the old name is retained, 
the business is conducted by the sons of the original 
partners. The business of the house is small compared 
to what it used to be, for the War gave a blow to our 
shipping interests, from which they have not yet 
recovered. Robert B. Minturn, who was universally 
esteemed in social and commercial circles died two years 



i 



Eminent Business Men. 667 

ago, and Moses H. Grinnell, a most creditable type of 
the old school merchant, takes no active part in the 
business. He is the President of the Sun Insurance 
Company, at $10,000 a year, and his name is mentioned 
in connection with a lucrative office durin^r the incominsr 
administration. The name of Grinnell became widely 
known by the expedition Henry, Moses' brother, and 
one of the original members of the firm, fitted out ten 
or twelve years ago, for the search of Sir John Franklin, 
and in which laudable undertaking he spent a large sum 
of money. Moses was born in New Bedford, Mass., was 
bred a merchant, and was a representative in Congress 
from New York from 1839 to 1841. He is sixty-five ; has 
white hair and whiskers, florid complexion, and is quite 
English-looking. He is very affable and courteous ; has 
been in times past a profuse entertainer, and is still a very 
pleasant companion. He was to South street what Jacob 
Little was to Wall street. He formerly resided in the 
house occupied by Delmonico, in Fourteenth street, but 
now lives at Irvington, on the Hudson. 

Howland, Aspinwall & Co., another famous shipping 
house, are at No. 54 South street. It is conducted by 
Gardiner G. Howland and Samuel and Wm. H. Aspin- 
wall, and though still doing a large business, it is much 
less extended than it has been. The firm formerly 
owned numerous vessels in the California and trans- 
Atlantic trade ; but the War so prostrated our commerce 
as to interfere largely with their interests. Gardiner 
G. Howland lives in affluence ; dispenses elegant hospi- 
talities; drives fast horses; stands high on 'Change and 
in fashionable circles. 

Horace B. Claflin & Co., after Stewart, do the heavi- 
est business in dry-goods in the Union. Indeed, Claf- 



G68 The Great Metropolis. 

lin's wholesale trade is larger than that of Stewart, who, 
by adding his retail department, swells his aggregate 
sales beyond those of his energetic rival. Claflin's im- 
mense house occupies half of the whole block on Church, 
Worth, and West Broadway; is, Stewart's up-town bazaar 
excepted, the finest and most conspicuous in the whole 
City. Claflin employs 600 or 700 persons in his estab- 
lishment, and pays liberal salaries to all of them, giving 
his confidential clerk $25,000 a year. He is a native of 
New-England; has a "down-East" appearance; being 
thin, angular, smooth-shaven, energetic, prompt, and 
direct in his dealings. He is much more popular than 
Stewart; has the reputation of being liberal in his 
relations, both mercantile and private, and is highly 
esteemed by his employes. He is probably worth 
$12,000,000 to $15,000,000, and his trade extends to 
all the States, the Territories, Canada, and South 
America. During the busy season his store looks like 
a human bee-hive. The sidewalks on the three sides of 
the vast building are covered with boxes, bales, and 
cases, directed to every town and village in the United 
States. Every ship that comes to the port, and touches 
at our piers, brings merchandise for him ; and his name 
is written in the ledgers of all the great firms of Man- 
chester, Glasgow, and London, Paris, Hamburg, and 
Berlin. His business increases every season, and his 
is the one controlling, directing mind that computes 
millions as easily as some men's does pennies. 

Abiel A. Low has been twice elected President of 
the Chamber of Commerce, and his house, A. A. Low & 
Brothers, stands at the head of the China trade. Low 
is a native of Salem, Mass., the son of Seth Low, him- 
self an eminent merchant, and in his early manhood 



Eminent Business Men. CG9 

removed to this City. His father having been in the 
China trade, the young man wished to visit that coun- 
try to acquire a knowledge of the business. Tie did so, 
and soon after his arrival became a partner in the well- 
known house of Russell & Co., of Canton. He remained 
in the firm for eight years, until he had become its 
head, withdrawing from it in 1841, and returning to the 
United States. The same year he established, with his 
two brothers, the present house, which is at No. 31 Bur- 
ling slip, retaining his correspondents in China. Messrs. 
Low are very large ship-owners. Their vessels arrive 
with teas, silks, crapes, nankeens, and return with what 
the Celestials desire in exchange. They have recently 
established a house at Yokahama, and have large inter- 
ests in the Japan trade. Low's loyalty to the Govern- 
ment during the War was unswerving even in the dark- 
est hours. He gave his money freely to the cause, and 
has always been a generous encourager of literature, 
education, and art. He lives in Brooklyn, and in the 
midst of his family is said to find his purest enjoyment. 
E. S. Jaffray & Co., the well known importers. No. 
350 Broadway, do a very heavy and profitable business, 
and stand very high in mercantile circles. Their large 
brown-stone store is said to be one of the pleasantest in 
town to be employed in. Every clerk, and salesman, and 
carman, and porter in the establishment is attached to 
the firm, and speaks of '' our house" with a natural and 
praiseworthy pride. Jaffray is of Scotch extraction, a 
sandy-haired, sandy-complexioned man, with many of the 
qualities of his nationality. His word is literally as 
good as his bond. He is frequently chosen umpire and 
referee by his fellow-merchants, and his decision is 
always acquiesced in. 



670 The Great Metropolis. 

He has never been known to take any unfair advan- 
tage in trade, or in any dealing with his fellows. When 
his store was injured by the burning of Chittenden's 
establishment, Winter before last, the underwriters sup- 
posed his loss was large, and would gladly have paid 
him $150,000 to $200,000 for damages. He said it 
was trifling, however, and made a return of only a few 
thousands. He is reported to be worth $5,000,000 or 
$6,000,000, and to give away a large part of his income 
in charity. 

Jaffray, judging from his reputation, is a model mer- 
chant, after whom dozens that are better known and 
much richer might take pattern with advantage to them- 
selves and the community at large. 

Jackson S. Schultz is one of our largest leather 
dealers, at No. 96 Cliff street. He has been very 
successful in business, having begun life as a practical 
tanner, and is probably worth $1,500,000 to $2,000,000. 
He owes his fortune entirely to his own exertions. He 
attends personally to all the details of his business ; but 
finds ample leisure to devote to charities and humanities 
of every kind. He was for a long while President of the 
Board of Health, which owes to him its usefulness if not 
its origin. He is an officer and director in many of the 
charitable institutions, and on an average spends five or 
six hours a day in looking after the good and happiness 
of others. 

Few men are busier than he, or have more to attend 
to ; but his energy, perseverance, and zeal carry him 
through all he undertakes. He is extremely generous, 
and hundreds of persons whom he has forgotten, speak 
with enthusiastic gratitude of the favors they have re- 
ceived at his hands. 



Eminent Business Men. 671 

Shultz is a muscular, shaggy-haired, strong, large- 
limbed, large-hearted man, who might have made a prize- 
jBghter, if nature had not put into his bosom the soul of 
a gentleman, and filled his blood with currents of ten- 
derness that run quickly to the call of every creature in 
sorrow and distress. 

Among the numerous publishing houses in the City 
the Appletons and Harpers stand at the head on account 
of their age, their excellence, and their great wealth. 

D. Appleton & Co. is still the style of the firm, though 
Daniel Appleton, the founder of the house, has long since 
been dead. The business is conducted by his four sons, 
the eldest of whom is over fifty, and the youngest two 
or three and thirty. The story current that Daniel 
Appleton was a practical printer, came early to the 
Metropolis, and nearly half a century ago had a small 
printing office in or near Pearl street, is wholly without 
foundation. He was born in Haverhill, Mass.; was a 
general storekeeper there ; afterward removed to a larger 
field in Boston, and subsequently to this City. Here he 
began the importation of English books, and from the 
small beginning grew up a very considerable business. 
He changed his quarters to more commodious ones, and 
soon had more than he could do. From that time till 
the day of his death his business rapidly and regularly 
increased, and at present it is still increasing. 

Appleton & Co. have recently removed from their 
handsome marble store in Broadway to the new building 
corner of Grand and Greene streets, and have their vast 
printing and book-binding establishment in Williams- 
burg instead of Franklin street. They have done less 
and less of late in miscellaneous books and in the retail 
trade, having turned their attention to the publication of 



672 The Great Metropolis. 

school and Spanish works. In the latter they do an im- 
mense business with South America, shipping boxes upon 
boxes of Don Quixote, Calderon, and Da Vega, and 
other classics, by almost every vessel that leaves here 
for Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, and Rio Janeiro. On 
various books they have made large sums. On the New 
American Cyclopedia, for instance, they have cleared, up 
to the present time, not less than $700,000, and the sale 
is still steady. No one knows how much they are worth ; 
perhaps they do not know themselves. The firm must 
count its wealth by millions, and their regular business 
must bring an income of fully $100,000 to each of the 
members. They are still close calculators and shrewd 
managers, and look after the dollars as if they had but 
a slender salary to depend on, which is the Avay of pros- 
perous human nature, and particularly the way of the 
Appletons. 

Harper & Brothers is the oldest publishing house in the 
country. The firm is composed of James, aged seventy- 
three ; John, seventy-one ; Joseph W., sixty-seven ; 
and Fletcher, sixty-two. They have seven of their sons 
in the establishment, so it may well be called a family 
concern. The four brothers are sons of a Long Island 
farmer, having been born in Newtown. He was very 
industrious and frugal, and his boys have been like him. 
James and John were apprenticed by their father to the 
printing business in this City. They afterward set up 
as printers for booksellers, though they set type and 
worked at the press themselves. Wesley and Fletcher 
were subsequently apprenticed to their elder brothers, 
and when they had served their time obtained an in- 
terest in the business. Fletcher, though the youngest, 
is the real manager and director of the house. He it 



Eminent Business Men. 673 

was who originated the idea of the Magazine, to which, 
it is said, the other brothers were opposed, fearful that 
it would prove an unprofitable enterprise. He per- 
suaded them at last to accept his view, and the result 
proved the soundness of his judgment. The Magazine 
succeeded at once, and it now has a circulation of more 
than 125,000. In 1853, three years after the issuing 
of the Monthly, the establishment was burned to the 
ground, causing a loss of $1,500,000. The Harpers were 
still in comfortable circumstances ; but they had no idea 
of being driven out of business by a fire. They took 
counsel with each other the night after the occurrence, 
and determined to go on without delay. In two weeks 
they had a plan for a new building, which they resolved 
should be fire-proof, to prevent a repetition of the dis- 
aster. The result was the immense structure in Frank- 
lin square, which has another entrance on Cliff street. 
The building is of iron, painted white, seven stories high. 
The two main buildings are connected by iron bridges, 
as are the different stories by a circular iron staircase 
running outside the building. The structure is the 
largest and completest in the world. It employs seven 
or eight hundred persons, over a hundred of them 
women, who read MS., print, electrotype, bind, draw, 
and engrave. The Harpers have every facility for 
making a perfect book, and turn out excellent work. 
Their facilities are so great and their connections so 
numerous that they can sell enough copies of almost any 
book they accept to avoid loss. They are practical 
men ; having no idea of publishing a volume they think 
won't pay. Of course, they make mistakes sometimes ; 
but not half so often as would be supposed. Their 
issues include every thing, from sentimental novels to 

43 



674 The Great Metropolis. 

purely scientific works, from European guide-books to 
reprints of the ancient classics. They publish Harpers^ 
Weeldy and the Bazar, both of which have had enor- 
mous success. 

James was once Mayor of the City, having been 
elected when the municipal government was so outra- 
geously administered that the people determined upon 
a change. He is very quiet and undemonstrative ; 
adheres so closely to his duties that if you were to see 
him at his desk you would imagine him an old and 
faithful book-keeper, to whom method and application 
had become second nature. He is very young-looking 
for his years, and is much taller than John, who is also 
a reticent, hard worker. Joseph, a thin and diffident- 
seeming man, bears slight resemblance to his brothers ; 
thinks much and says little. He has more culture and 
literary taste than any of the others, and is said to write 
with force and elegance. Fletcher is the talker and 
humorist of the firm. He is tall, light-haired, blue-eyed, 
has a well-shaped head, and is very pleasant and com- 
panionable withal. He looks after new books, the Week- 
lies, and the Monthly, and receives authors and writers 
who have dealings with the firm. John Harper super- 
vises the general business, Joseph attends to the literary 
correspondence, and James directs the diiferent depirt- 
ments. The four brothers can be found almost any day 
in the counting-room, which is separated by an iron rail- 
ing from the general salesroom, on the second floor. 
They go to their desks regularly, and have no patience 
with men who fail to do their duty. They enjoy work. 
They have been actively engaged so long that they 
could not stop if they would. They are a peculiar old 
quartette, and though anxious always to drive a good 



Eminent Business Men. 675 

bargain, are among the most liberal publishers in the 
City. 

Among the well-known landlords of New- York, Col. 
Charles A. Stetson is the most conspicuous. Though he no 
longer takes an active part in the management of the As- 
tor, he is to be seen daily in its corridors, and is as full of 
interesting reminiscence, pleasant anecdote, and dramatic 
illustration as ever. Though over sixty he would pass for 
forty, and his smooth, rosy face, mild eyes, and genial ex- 
pression, bring back New- York as it was more than thirty 
years ago. He is a pattern Boniface ; is thoroughly well 
bred, easy, graceful, elegant, a delightful talker, and a 
general favorite. A native of Massachusetts, he reveres 
New-England, and yet loves New- York. Unlike many 
of his class, he was decided in his political views from 
the beginning of the War; aided the Northern cause 
and soldiers with voice and money. His hotel was 
always open to loyal soldiers whether they had or had 
not the means of payment. His reply to a dispatch, 
*' The Astor House has no price for Massachusetts sol- 
diers," was a patriotic poem, and will long be remem- 
bered. 

The Lelands are famed among hotel proprietors. 
They now have seven or eight houses ; the Metropoli- 
tan here, the Union and Columbian at Saratoga, the 
Delavan at Albany, the Occidental at San Francisco, 
and several others. They seem born to the business; 
for they have always succeeded where others have 
failed. Simeon Leland is the principal man here, albeit 
no one seems to understand where one Leland fades off 
and another rises into light. They are all energetic, 
sharp, tactful, good judges of human nature, and under- 
stand the peculiar line of their calling. 



676 The Great Metropolis. 

R-. L. & A. Stuart are the famous sugar-refiners. 
They began life in the most humble way. Their 
mother, an industrious Irish woman, was so poor that 
she made molasses candy, and sent her little boys out 
to sell it. From that homely trade she set up a small 
candy store in Chambers street, out of which grew the 
large establishment and the well-known sugar-refinery 
that have made for the firm a vast fortune. Alexander 
Stuart still lives a bachelor in Chambers street, but 
Robert L. has one of the handsomest houses in Fifth 
avenue, at the corner of Twentieth street. The Stuarts 
are devout Presbyterians, and are fine examples of what 
honesty and industry will accomplish for friendless boys. 



CHAPTER LXXXVX 

YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 

The Young Men's Christian Association, designed for 
the mental and more especially the moral improvement 
of young men, is about sixteen years old. The society 
was organized here, and held its first meeting at Stuy- 
vesant Institute in Broadway. Since then every large 
city and town in the country has formed associations of 
the same name, with the same object. Its present quar- 
ters are at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-second 
street, where they have pleasant rooms. 

They expect to remove the coming year to the corner 
of Twenty-third street and Fourth avenue, where their 
new building, a six-story brick, which, with the ground, 
will cost $400,000 or $500,000, is now in process of 
erection. The stores on the first floor will be rented 
with other parts of the building, so that the income from 
the property will be handsome. The Association is to 
have a large library, lecture and reading rooms, parlors, 
and a gymnasium, where young men will be invited to 
pass their evenings instead of exposing themselves to 
the temptations, or indulging in the vices of the City. 

Branches have been established down town — one of 
them in Wooster street for colored young men — and 
more will be. 

The Association has done much good in furnishing th& 



678 The Great Metropolis. 

means of instruction and rational enjoyment to young 
men in town, particularly to strangers. Its rooms are 
always open to such, and a warm welcome is always ex- 
tended. The members give a standing invitation to the 
public to attend their prayer-meetings and devotional 
exercises, and if the greater part of the public fail to 
seek religion as a source of consolation and happiness, 
preferring theaters, concert saloons, billiards and bar- 
rooms to theological discussions and the teachings of 
Christ, it must be attributed to the Avicked perversity 
that marks fallen humanity. The young Christians do 
their part energetically and conscientiously, and the sins 
of the unregenerate multitude are not upon their un- 
sullied souls. 

The Association claims the credit of originating the 
Fulton street prayer-meeting, which has held a protracted 
session for the past twelve or thirteen years. Any body 
of men, young or old, who could create a spirit of prayer 
that would last through such a period can not be too 
highly commended. The Fulton street prayer-meeting 
is as actively and enthusiastically conducted as it was 
before the War; and from all past and present indica- 
tions is likely to be perpetual. It must be a great relief 
to the merchants and clerks in the vicinity to sink their 
trials and cares in noonday devotions, and open their 
surcharged bosoms to the confidence of Heaven. The 
merchants thereabout often speak, I am told, of the 
happy effect of snatching a few minutes from the busiest 
hours of the day, and giving them freely to the Lord. 

At the breaking out of the War, the Association 
interested itself profoundly in the spiritual needs of the 
soldiers who had volunteered. The members visited 
the camps about the City ; distributed hymn-books, and 



Young Men's Christian Association. 679 

bibles, and tracts of a most elevating character, repre- 
senting the danger of the wicked and the advantage of 
being on the right side, whether the battle was waged 
against the South or the devil. After the opening of 
hostilities the young Christians visited the hospitals of 
the w^ounded in and about New- York, and were ready 
to act as watchers and nurses whenever their services 
were needed. They rendered invaluable aid in that 
way, and toward the close of 1861 founded the Christian 
Commission, whose members visited the armies, and 
during and after the battles rendered all possible aid to 
the wounded, whether friend or foe. Those who were 
in the field can recall, as I do, countless instances of 
their generous devotion and Christian charity. 

The Association now has about seventeen or eighteen 
hundred members, and when they are in their new 
building, will have increased facilities for doing good. 
They now perform much religious mission work, and, by 
example, counsel, and solicitation, seek to turn the atten- 
tion and thoughts of all they can influence to the beauty 
of a purely Christian life. They propose to give a 
regular course of free lectures each season, and to offer 
such inducements to young men as will make their 
rooms attractive and instructive. The religious com- 
munity has much interest in the Association, and will, 
no doubt, co-operate with it in all it undertakes. Money 
has been freely subscribed for the society, and will be 
again. It works with so much zeal, and has such per- 
fect faith in its future and its benefit to humanity, that 
it appeals to the generosity and admiration even of 
many who hold very different views, but who reverence 
the earnest desire to do good wherever shown. 



CHAPTER LXXXVn. 

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Our Public Schools are among the few public things 
in the City that are creditable ; though this is truer of 
the system than of its application. The schools are 
under the direction of the Board of Education, composed 
of Trustees elected from the districts, and of Com- 
missioners from the wards. When the Trustees and 
Commissioners happen to be educated men of character, 
the schools they have charge of are well managed ; but 
when, as very often happens, they are ignorant and un- 
principled, the schools suffer thereby. There is, there- 
fore, a marked difference in the schools. Some of them 
are excellent, and others the opposite. 

It is not uncommon for the Trustees to be keepers of 
groggeries, who can hardly write their own name, and 
who would be last in the lowest spelling-class, if they 
were submitted to the mysterious test of orthography. 

The pupils are as different as they conveniently can 
be, and vary with the district. In the lower wards, and 
on the east side of the town, they are mostly of foreign 
parentage, and very inferior to those of the schools in 
Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Twenty-eighth streets. Nor are 
all the pupils, as is often supposed, the children of poor 
people, though the majority are. In some of the dis- 
tricts the scholars belong to the best families in the City, 



The Public Schools. G81 

their parents sending them to prove their democratic 
principles. 

The school-houses are nearly all handsome buildings of 
brick, well arranged, well ventilated, and well furnished. 
They number ninety-four in all. Of these, thirty-five 
contain three separate departments — masculine, feminine, 
and primary ; eight, two departments — masculine and 
primary ; five, feminine and primary ; one, masculine 
and feminine ; two, two feminine departments and pri- 
maries ; two, with one department only for both sexes, 
and thirty-six separate primary schools, making in all 
one hundred and eighty-seven separate and distinct de- 
partments or schools, viz.: forty-four grammar schools 
for boys (including colored schools); forty-five grammar 
schools for girls (including colored schools); seven gram- 
mar schools for both sexes (including colored schools) 
fifty-five primary departments (including colored 
schools); thirty-six primary schools (including colored 
schools). 

The attendance at the schools steadily increases. Last 
year it was about four thousand more than during the 
year previous. The latest report gives the following : — 

o Average Whole A'o. 

°'^"'^°^^- Aiteiidance. Taught. 

Grammar Schools and Primary Departments 65,139 146,986 

Primary Schools 16,459 43,068 

Colored Schools 731 2,056 

Evening Schools 1,479 16,510 

Normal Schools 406 1,000 

Corporate Schools 6,014 16,561 

Total 96,294 226,181 

The whole number of teachers employed in the sev- 
eral schools and departments during last year was 2,206, 
of whom 176 were men and 2,030 women. Of this 



682 The Great Metropolis. 

number, 241 held certificates of qualification from the 
State Superintendent of Public Instruction, twenty-six 
were graduates of the State Normal School at Albany, 
and the remainder held certificates from this Depart- 
ment. Upward of 1,900 of these teachers have been 
engaged in teaching six months and over during the year. 

Children can begin with the alphabet in the primary 
schools, and end with graduation, if girls, at the grahi- 
mar schools ; or, if boys, with graduation, at the Free 
Academy, now called the College of the City of New- 
York. The girls have no high school coresponding to 
the Academy, where Latin, Greek, mathematics, and all 
the branches of a regular college are taught ; but this 
want will probably soon be supplied. Those who 
intend to become teachers study for a year or two in 
the supplemental classes, in which particular attention is 
paid to algebra, geometry and trigonometry, physics, 
chemistry, history, and general literature. 

The evening schools, twenty-six in number, with 
twelve feminine and fourteen masculine departments, 
are in most flourishing condition. Girls under ten, 
and boys under twelve years of age are not admit- 
ted, and satisfactory evidence as to character deport- 
ment, and earnest purpose are always required. The 
total number of scholars registered during last year 
was 15,279, and those attending the full term 6,165, 
only about 40 per cent, of the number registered. 
Many of the pupils are regular in attendance and very 
studious ; but more are so irregular as to defeat the 
object of the teachers. Not a few of the scholars are 
men and women. Germans over twenty-one are nume- 
rous in the Tenth and Seventeenth wards, their object 
being to learn English. 



The Public Schools. 683 

The evening High School in Thirteenth street is one 
of the most valuable of the schools. It is intended for 
young men in situations who wish to fit themselves for 
advanced positions. The school pays particular attention 
to book-keeping, the natural sciences, mathematics, and 
modern languages, especially French, German, and 
Spanish. All of the pupils are young men, the majority 
of them over eighteen, and earnest in their effort to 
improve. They number 900 or 1,000, and are among 
the most diligent and exemplary of the attendants at 
the Public Schools. Desire for knowledge with them 
is a hunger and a thirst, not a mere routine of study as it 
is with many who are educated at the expense of the City. 

The pupils of the schools have no outlay whatever, 
the City furnishing the necessary books, which are not 
the same in all the schools. The Board of Education 
selects such books as it thinks best for the pupils in the 
different schools, so that the geographies, arithmetics 
and grammars, even in the same classes, vary very much. 

Corporal punishment has been practically abolished, and 
with excellent effect, and other reforms are in progress. 

The teachers' salaries are from $550 to $2,500, and 
even $3,000 ; the first for women in the primary schools 
and the last for men as principals. It is a just ground 
for complaint that the men receive nearly one-half more 
than the women for performing exactly the same duties, 
which may be explained, though it can not be excused, 
by the fact that the feminine teachers, in proportion to 
the masculine, are as twelve to one. 

The annual expense of the schools, in round numbers, 
is $3,000,000, which, considering the average attend- 
ance at 100,000, makes the cost of educating each 
pupil about $300 a year. 



CHAPTER LXXXVIII. 
DISTINGUISHED WOMEN". 

Alice and Ph(ebe Gary are so intimately associated 
in the public mind, and so well known as the poet sisters, 
that one can hardly speak of them apart. Alice is five 
years older than Phoebe, and, having written much 
more, is f;xr better known. But they have always been 
together from early childhood, and their similarity of 
taste, and entire sympathy, prove that they are sisters 
in spirit as well as in blood. 

The Carys were born at Mount Pleasant, near Cin- 
cinnati, Ohio, and remained in that vicinity until they 
were young women. They lived in the country most 
of the time, and from the woods and streams, the hills 
and valleys that abound in the picturesque region about 
Cincinnati, acquired the fondness for, and familiarity 
with, Nature, which have since shown themselves in 
their writings, particularly in Alice's Clovernook stories. 

They were accustomed to commit their thoughts and 
feelings to paper from their girlhood, contributing verses 
and stories, as they grew older, to the newspapers and 
magazines that wore within their reach. For years 
they wrote without pay, because it was a pleasure to 
them, and so gained much facility and grace of compo- 
sition, particularly in verse. Alice was always very 
industrious, but Phoebe had comparatively little incli- 



Distinguished Women. G85 

nation to verse or to prose, and had a remarkable fond- 
ness for turning the tenderest poems into ridicule. She 
■wrote and printed a number of burlesques ; while her 
elder sister composed sweet and melancholy poems and 
interesting stories for the Western publications. ^ 

About eighteen years ago the Carys concluded to 
leave the West, come East, and make New- York their 
place of permanent residence. It was quite a bold 
movement for young women who, whatever their repu- 
tation at home, were hardly known here at all. But 
they had courage and hope, and struggled so bravely 
and perseveringly that they won recognition as poets 
of excellence. 

Alice has published seven or eight books, several of 
them novels, and Phoebe but two, both poems. The 
latter has shown marked improvement recently. She 
has far more power and depth, and seems to have de- 
veloped new capacities for the gentle art. Some of her 
poems are very fine ; " The Dead Love " being pro- 
nounced by foreign critics one of the best America has 
produced. AHce is indefatigable. She writes for all 
the magazines and principal weeklies, and yet it is 
doubtful if she averages more than $2,500 a year. Con- 
sidering her reputation, not to speak of her ability, this 
is not very encouraging to literary workers. 

The Carys, though they have remained unwedded 
(they deserve credit for having courage enough to bear 
the reputation of " old maids " without shrinking), are 
decidedly domestic in their tastes and habits. They 
have no desire to travel ; have never wanted to go 
abroad ; and, excepting a few weeks spent at the White 
Mountains during the Summer, seldom leave the City. 
They have a pleasant and comfortable house, which 



686 The Great Metropolis. 

they own, in Twentieth street, near Fourth avenue. 
It is full of books and pictures, and their friends and 
all cultivated strangers are always sure of a warm wel- 
come there. 

Phoebe is full, round, and very vivacious, with none 
of the pensiveness or dreaminess popularly associated 
with bards of either sex. She has dark eyes, black 
hair, and has such a Spanish look that if you were to 
meet her in Havana or Seville you would make oath 
she was a full-blooded Senora. She has a nimble 
tongue, and fully sustains the reputation of her sex for 
liberality in its use. She talks very well, and but for 
an irrepressible passion for puns would be a capital 
entertainer. She is very popular, and has many enthu- 
siastic friends of both sex. 

Alice is ver} unlike her sister in personal appear- 

.ance, habit, and temperament. She has long been deli- 
cate, while Phoebe is the picture of robust health; but 
still she is always cheerful, and shows extraordinary 
patience and power of work under the circumstances. 
She has a few threads of gray in her abundant hair, 
and her dark, deep, tender eyes and swarthy com- 
plexion make one think of a sentimental gipsy. She 
is an interesting woman, and though no longer hand- 
some, she has a poetic and decidedly attractive f\\ce. 
An air of calm resignation and gentle sadness hangs 
over her that adds to her agreeableness with persons of 
quick sympathy and fine sensibility. She is much es- 
teemed and greatly loved. 

]> The Carys have been for years in the habit of giving 
Sunday evening receptions, where many of the literary 
men, journalists, and artists of the City meet. It is one 
of the few places in New-York where the artistic class 



Distinguished Women. 687 

meet on common and agreeable ground. I know of no 
other house, except Mrs. Anne Lynch Botta's, where 
such reunions are regularly held. A number of our 
literary Avomen visit the Carys on Sunday, where the 
tea-table is always set for about twenty persons. No 
ceremony is used or is necessary. Any one who wishes 
to come is welcome. The gatherings are so entirely 
free and unconventional that often persons are not even 
introduced. 

Among the well-known feminine writers to be seen 
at the Carys is Mrs. Sara Willis Parton, whom every 
one knows as the redoubtable Fanny Fern. 

Mrs. Mary Clemmer Ames, the Washington corre- 
spondent of the Independent, and a very clever writer, 
is a visitor there when in the City — she has recently 
made this her home — and adds to the interest of the 
assemblies. She is a tall, large, blue-eyed, brown-haired 
woman, very quiet and retiring in manner, whom it is 
difficult to draw out. When interested, she speaks 
earnestly and eloquently, though a natural shyness pre- 
vents her from revealing on ordinary occasions her gifts 
of mind. 

Kate Field, daughter of James M. Field, the actor, 
now^ deceased, and a bright writer for the Atlantic and 
other magazines, is rather small in stature, a pleasant 
blonde ; seems to be in excellent spirits always, and 
delights in epigrammatic conversation. She was a friend 
of that cultivated and peculiar brute, Walter Savage Lan- 
der, whom she knew in Italy. She gained considerable 
fame here by her elaborate Tribune critiques, or, rather, 
eulogies, upon Ristori, when she first appeared in this 
country. She is frequently at the receptions. 

Mrs. Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, of the Tribune staff, 



688 The Great Metropolis. 

declared by Horace Greeley to be the most brilliant 
writer on the paper, makes periodical calls at the Carys. 
She is tall, lithe, graceful, and particularly elegant, almost 
the opposite of what many people fancy a literary 
woman to be. She is not handsome, though I have 
heard many call her so when her face is animated. She 
has abundant chestnut hair, rather a tawny complexion, 
hazel eyes that look green often, and are really beauti- 
ful. She dresses in exquisite taste, and seems thor- 
oughly a woman of society. She is called charming by 
all her friends and by many who have hardly seen her. 
She is a fine conversationalist and a most agreeable 
entertainer. 

Madame Octavia Walton Levert, the well-known 
Southern authoress, whose home was in Mobile, Ala., 
until she came here to live, is an habitue of Twentieth 
street. She does not personally give the impression you 
might get from her writings. She is large, and not at 
all distinguished ; but she is highly cultivated, very 
agreeable in conversation, and winning in manners. 
Wealthy before the War, she has lost her fortune, but 
is cheerful and even happy under the shadow of 
adversity. 

Jenny June (Mrs. Jennie C. Croly), the popular 
fashion writer for most of the leading papers, and the 
editor of Madame Demorest's magazine, is a very pleas- 
ant woman. She is of medium size ; has blue eyes and 
brown hair, is full of amiability and kindness, and is 
much liked for her freedom from pretense or affectation 
of any kind. She makes an hour pleasant on Sunday 
evening at the Carys, and is an accession to their supe- 
rior company. 

Mrs. Mary E. Dodge, author of the " Irvington Stories," 



Distinguished WoxMEN. G89 

and many other popular books, is a bundle of sunshine ; 
abounds in lively repartee and pleasant wit. She is 
small, has very dark hair, and gray eyes ; is always 
busy about something ; full of feeling and generous sen- 
timents, and makes friends of her slightest acquaint- 
ances. Though long a widow, and the mother of boys 
taller than herself, she seems like a school-girl in her 
fresh-hearted humor that never tires. 

Mrs. Sarah F. Ames, the renowned sculptor, is also a 
frequenter of the Carys. She is very foreign in appear- 
ance. Her eyes and hair are black as night ; her mouth 
is well shaped and rosy ; and she talks with an intens- 
ity and eloquence that prove the ardor of her tempera- 
ment. She is a very independent, strong, efficient 
woman, entirely in sympathy with every liberal move- 
ment and generous purpose. She has no fear of Mrs. 
Grundy when convinced of the justice or worthiness of 
her intent, and is worth a thousand of the merely com- 
mon-place fashionable women who dawdle life away in 
worse than empty frivolity. 

There are other and clever women who visit the 
Carys ; but those I have named are the most regular 
attendants at the weekly receptions, and types of the 
cultivated class, who find there sympathy and expres- 
sion without narrowness, conventionality, or dread of the 
frowns of a society that is free from brains and innocent 
of heart. 

44 



CHAPTER LXXXIX. 
CITY CHARITIES. 

If it be true that Charity covers a multitude of sins, 
New-York's many and grievous ones should always be 
veiled. Our charities are, probably, larger and more 
liberal than those of any city in the World. How 
loud vice is, and how quiet virtue ! The country 
echoes to the iteration of our corruption, extravagance, 
and licentiousness; but our great heart, our generous 
alms-giving, our beautiful sacrifice, go voiceless through 
the land. 

The hospitals of the Metropolis number thirteen, and 
the asylums thirty-nine. 

St. Luke's (Episcopal), Fifth avenue, between Fifty- 
fourth and Fifty-fifth streets, was incorporated in 1850, 
and owes its origin to the Rev. Wm. A. Muhlenberg. 
In addition to furnishing medical and surgical aid, it 
aims to give instruction in the art of nursing. The 
principal front is on Fifty-fourth street, and 280 feet 
long. It is an oblong parallelogram, with wings at each 
end, and a central chapel flanked with towers. The 
wards on either side of the central building in the second 
and third stories are 109 feet long, 26 wide, and 14 high. 

The hospital, well ventilated and excellently arranged, 
is under the direction of the Superintendent and Sisters, 
a body of Protestant Christian women, bound by no 
vow, who, after a trial of six months, engage to serve 



City Charities. 691 

for three years, renewing iheir services if they like. 
The spirit of the Sisterhood is very like that of the 
Lutheran Deaconesses of Ka-iserwerth, who have done 
such efficient work in Germany. Their services arc wholly 
gratuitous, daily food being all they receive from the 
institution. Many of the prettiest and most fashionable 
young women of the City have from time to time been 
Sisters, and the romantic causes that led thereto, if told, 
would be very interesting. Such charming nurses have 
been rarely seen, and not a few of the patients have 
been unwilling to get well when so delightfully adminis- 
tered to. When patients are able to, they pay $7 a 
week, but the great majority have been supported by 
charity. They are admitted regardless of creed, though 
the form of worship is always Episcopal. 

The New- York Society for the Relief of the Ruptured 
and Crippled, at No. 97 Second avenue, is but five years 
old. Much good has been done by the society, who 
will soon erect a larger and better building in Lexing- 
ton avenue. There are about one hundred and seventy 
applicants a month, few of whom have the means of 
payment. 

The New-York State Woman's Hospital, twelve years 
old, is the offspring of a remarkable discovery in science 
made by an American, Dr. J. Marion Sims, of Alabama, 
who was its founder. Previous to his discovery, surgery 
Avas unable to do any thing for the class of affections the 
Hospital was designed to care for. Its treatment has 
been very successful, thousands of suffering women 
having been not only relieved, but permanently cured. 
Each county in the State is entitled to one free bed. 
Patients of all denominations are admitted, but only 
those aflQicted with some disease peculiar to women. 



692 The Great Metropolis. 

The corner-stone of a new and handsome edifice has 
been laid at Fourth avenue and Fiftieth street, and the 
building Avill before long be completed. Mrs. William 
B. Astor, Mrs. Peter Cooper, Mrs. Robert B. Minturn, 
Mrs. Moses H. Grinnell, and other prominent ladies are 
among the managers. This invaluable institution has 
actually saved the lives of four hundred women during 
the past year. 

St. Vincent's Hospital, under the direction of the Sis- 
ters of Charity, is at No. 195 West Eleventh street. It 
was opened in 1849, and for sixteen years the celebrated 
Dr. Valentine Mott was its consulting surgeon and 
physician. It will accommodate one hundred and fifty 
patients, and is mainly supported by what patients pay 
for treatment. During the past year it had one hundred 
and thirty-five free patients. 

The German Hospital and Dispensary is what its name 
indicates, and is on the block between Seventy-sixth 
and Seventy-seventh streets, and Fourth and Lexington 
avenues. C. Godfrey Gunther is the President, and 
prominent German citizens are its other officers and 
managers. 

The New-York Eye and Ear Infirmary, Second ave- 
nue, corner of Thirteenth street, was founded in 1820, 
and has met with marked success in treating cases be- 
lieved before its establishment to be incurable. 

The Mount Sinai Hospital, in West Twenty-eighth 
street, was founded in 1852, by Sampson Levison, a 
wealthy Hebrew, and is devoted to the Jews, though all 
denominations are admitted. During the War many 
soldiers were treated there. 

The Infirmary for Women and Children, No. 126 
Second avenue, was organized fifteen years ago, to af- 



City Charities. 693 

ford poor women the opportunity of consulting physicians 
of their own sex ; to assist educated ^vomen in the prac- 
tical study of medicine, and to form a school for instruc- 
tion in nursing and the laws of health. The institution is 
entirely under the direction of feminine physicians — Dr. 
Elizabeth Blackwell being the regular attendant. 

The Homeopathic Infirmary for Women, No. 57 West 
Forty-eighth street, has for its object the treatment of 
diseases peculiar to women. 

The Home for Incurables is at West Farms, West- 
chester county ; was organized three j^ears ago, to pro- 
vide some place other than the almshouse, where per- 
sons suffering from incurable diseases could be properly 
cared for. 

Bellevue, east of First avenue, between Twenty-sixth 
and Twenty-eighth streets, is the great pauper hospital 
of the City, and one of its noblest charities. It occu- 
pies four and a half acres, and the main building is 350 
feet long, four stories high, and is excellently adapted 
for its purpose. It was originally the Bellevue Alms- 
house ; but in 1848 the paupers were removed to 
Blackwell's Island. It is probably the best adapted for 
hospital purposes of any in the World, and can accom- 
modate 1,200 patients. The amount paid for salaries and 
wages is nearly $14,000 per annum. The medical 
organization consists of twenty consulting physicians 
and surgeons, and twenty attending physicians and 
surgeons. 

The New- York Hospital, in Broadway, opposite 
Worth street, was chartered in 1771, and is an old 
landmark of the town. It is under the direction of 
twenty-six governors ; is of gray granite, and in simple 
Doric style ; will accommodate 250 patients, has six 



694 The Great Metropolis. 

physicians and six surgeons, and is considered the best 
school of medicine and surgery in the country. Those 
admitted are supposed to be only temporary patients, 
and they are persons without means of payment, sea- 
men paid for from the hospital money, collected under 
the laws of the United States, at the rate of seven dol- 
lars a w^eek, and regular pay patients. The grounds 
are large and well laid out, and worth $3,000,000. 

The Nursery and Child's Hospital, corner of Fifty- 
first street and Lexington avenue, has been established 
fourteen years, and is intended for children whose 
mothers have become insane or invalids, or are orphans. 
Women obliged to go out to service, who have hereto- 
fore been compelled to leave their children in the alms- 
house, can have them cared for at the Nursery by pay- 
ing a small price, always in proportion to the wages 
they receive. There are lying-in wards at the hospital, 
where unfortunate mothers can give birth to their babes, 
and hide their shame from the public. If this depart- 
ment were generally known it is believed many infant- 
murders would be prevented. Usually there are about 
two hundred children and one hundred adults in the 
Nursery. 

The Bloomingdale, the largest and best known of the 
asylums, is in 117th street, betAveen Tenth and Eleventh, 
avenues, about a quarter of a mile from the Hudson, on 
what is known as the Harlem Heights, commanding a fine 
prospect. The farm has about forty-five acres, most of 
which are under high cultivation. It was opened in 
1821, and its fine brown stone buildings are admirably 
adapted to the object they have in view. The patients 
are morally and scientifically treated, and with very 
happy efi'ect. The asylum is under the care of a special 



City Charities. 695 

committee, consisting of six governors elected annually. 
It has never been open for the gratuitous reception of 
insane persons, as none but pay patients are admitted 
unless by express direction of the governors. Indigent 
patients from any part of the State are, however, re- 
ceived at the lowest rate, and all others upon such terms 
as are agreed upon. 

The Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Washington Heights 
was founded in 181G, and was the first in the country. 
The grounds comprise thirty-seven acres, and with the 
buildings, which are of brick, with granite basements 
and copings, cost $500,000. In 1831 the pupils num- 
bered eighty-five ; now they reach four hundred and 
thirty-three. Since its establishment eighteen hundred 
have been under instruction. At first it was supported 
by priviite benevolence, but was soon taken under the 
patronage of the State. The regular term of instruction 
is eight years, and three additional for pupils selected 
for good conduct and capacity to pursue higher studies. 
The system of instruction is based on the fact that ges- 
tures are the natural language of the deaf and dumb. 

The Institution for the Blind, in Ninth avenue, between 
Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth streets, is thirty-seven 
years old, and is a school of instruction, which is three- 
fold, mechanical, musical, and intellectual. The pupils 
advance year by year from one class to another until 
the whole course is completed. Many who have been 
educated there now occupy useful and responsible 
positions ; are merchants, manufacturers, teachers, and 
clergymen. 

Leake and Watt's Orphan House, designed as the 
home of entire orphans, is between Ninth and Tenth 
avenues and 110th and 113th streets, and owes its 



696 The Great Metropolis. 

origin to a liberal bequest of Leake, who died without 
heirs. 

St. Luke's Home for Indigent Christian Women was 
organized in 1851; is at No. 481 Hudson street, and 
what its title indicates. It is Episcopalian, but not 
sectarian. 

The Home for the Friendless, No. 29 East Twenty- 
ninth street, was established in 1834, and has done 
much good. It receives all destitute women of good 
moral character, of whom good conduct and proper 
discipline are expected. 

Among the other asylums are the House of Mercy, 
Eighty-sixth street, west of Broadway, which offers a 
home for fallen women ; the Colored Orphan Asylum, 
151st street, near North River, containing two hun- 
dred and sixty inmates, and well managed ; the Mag- 
dalen Society, Eighty-eighth street, which has done 
much to restore erring women to a virtuous life ; Union 
Home, Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth streets, near 
Eighth avenue, for the maintenance of children of our 
soldiers and sailors; Asylum for Lying-in Women, No. 
85 Marion street; Women's Prison Association, No. 191 
Tenth avenue, for the support and encouragement of 
prisoners after their discharge ; House of the Good 
Shepherd, foot of Ninetieth street ; Protective Union, 
for aiding women in obtaining situations and money due 
from unjust employers ; also. Catholic orphan asylums 
and other valuable institutions. 

Not less than $10,000,000 or $12,000,000 are proba- 
bly invested in the city charities, which must be sup- 
ported at the rate of $1,000,000 per annum. 




Tin: FIRST SXOW. 



CHAPTER XC. 
THE GREAT METROPOLIS. 

As HAS been so often said, New-York is a City of 
contrasts. It has no virtue without its corresponding 
sin- no light without its shadow; no beauty without 
deformity; for it is a httle world in itself, and must, 
necessarily he made up of all the elements of good and 
evil Its citizens are as sensible of its grievous defects 
as strangers can be ; but they know of its redeeming 
qualities as others do not. It is the stock-in-trade of 
the country press to abuse the Metropohs ; to grow 
eloquent over its corruption, its licentiousness, its crime. 
The City has sins enough to answer for, Heaven knows ; 
but it is painted blacker than it deserves, and the bright 
hues that belong to it are hidden under the veil_ ot 
censure. New-York is worse than other Amencan 
cities because it is larger; because it is a point ail 
foreigners touch, and many of them linger m, bringing 
their bad habits, their vices, their pauperism with them. 
Here all adventurers, and sharpers, and vile characters 
tend, because this is the great center, and gives support 
and encouragement to all manner of men. ^ 

NewTork, like the World it represents, is steadily 
though slowly growing better. It bears no comparison 
for ;ickedness with what it was fifteen or even ten 
years ago. Rowdyism has no such immumty, lawless 



698 The Great Metropolis. 

ness no such power. Even the municipal government 
has improved, and will improve. Every thing advances : 
it is the eternal law; and the time is coming when a 
corrupt judge and a dishonest councilman will be driven 
from office on this very Island. New Homers may not 
sing in the street; nor new Dantes write divine comedies; 
nor new Shakspeares set the soul of the Universe to 
music. But there wall be braver men and truer women, 
and the spirit of pure Nature will so enter into them 
that they will be transformed outwardly and inwardly. 

The City, containing a milHon within its proper lim- 
its, and a million and a half within a radius of ten 
. miles, is destined, doubtless before another century has 
ended, to be the Metropolis of the World as well as of 
this Continent. Among the centers of civilization, it is 
now the third in point of population. In 1790 the City 
5 had less than 30,000 souls. In 1807, Robert Fulton 
'navigated the Hudson to Albany with the first steam- 
boat. In eighty or ninety years more what may we not 
look for ? 

I see the day, though I may not with my mortal 
eye, when the wretched slums, the vile dens, the loath- 
some tenements, will be banished from the town ; when 
all the streets will be clean, and the houses wholesome ; 
when the parks and squares will be filled with happy 
people, and New- York be called the City of the Beauti- 
ful. Commerce, and wealth, and intelligence will in- 
crease, and ours will become the first of nations as this 
will be the first of cities. We shall eclipse London in 
fpopulation, and Paris in picturesqueness and elegance. 
We shall have whole streets of marble, immense libra- 
ries and galleries of art. Our people will have so 
advanced in culture, self-discipline, and above all, in 



The Gkeat Metropolis. 



699 



humanity, that what ^ve not only tolerate but advocate 
now, we shall regard as barbarous then. 

Jud-nn-r by the past, what may not, what will not 
New-York be in a hundred years ? If those now hvmg 
were to see it after a century, they would not recognize 
it any more than Hendrick Hu.lson or Wouter \on 
TwiUer would the Great City of the present day. Ine 
future will be as a magnificent dream, but a dream that 
will be reaUzed. New-York is the City of the time to 
come The sea that washes its shores is murmuring ot 
its greatness; the breezes that fan it are whispering of 
its beauty; the stars that shine over it are silently pre- 
dicting its excellence. It is now, I repeat, the Great 
Metropolis of the Continent, and in the next ceii ury 
will be the Great Metropolis of the World. Nothing 
can resist its progress. Its course is onward and upwanl. 
Its destiny must be fulfilled in development, in improve- 
ment, in the true democracy that is the basis and builder 
of all permanent greatness. 

Let those who will, despair of the Republic, of the 
principle of self-government, of the intelUgence and 
integrity of the people. Would that such might iv. 
for another century, and behold on our shores, and on 
this Island, the fruits of our industry, our perseverance, 
our independence, our perfect faith in ourselves I see 
the -reat and glorious future as with a prophetic eye. 
New°territories will be developed; new States will be 
added ; new resources will be at our command. The 
vast commerce of China and Japan will be at our doors. 
Cities now sleeping in nntiUed prairies, and upon tli. 
shores of the far-off Pacific, will awake to power and 
pleasantness. New-York will be the ""nter and sphere 
of all the mighty trade, the store-house of the Nations 



"J" 00 The Great Metropolis. 

wealth, the depot of its commerce, stretching over every 
river, lake, and ocean. The wonders of fable will be 
outdone ; the vision of the poet will be eclipsed. This 
City will be a country of itself, a nation in its strength, 
its resources, its incalculable riches. Broadway will be 
the great thoroughflire of the World ; Fifth avenue the 
street of luxury and splendor beyond what history has 
shown. Our rivers will be spanned with noble bridges, 
and Babylon, Palmyra, Rome, and Athens, in their 
palmiest days will be re-created here. Our grandsons 
and granddaughters will turn to the musty records of 
the present, and tell their children, and their children's 
children of the time when New-York had but a million 
souls. And we, slumbering quietly in our graves, will 
be glad we lived a century before, that our descendants 
might dwell amid fairer and happier days in that other 
century which will round to rosy restfulness all our 
present pains and carking cares. 



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EICHAEDSO]NJ-^S 

'BEYOND THE MISSISSIPPI/ 

THE MOST FASCINATINGJOOK OF THE YEAR. 

A Thrilling Eecord of Border life, Humor and Adventure. 

500 l^arge Octavo Pages-203 Illustrations. 

by ALBiiRT D. Richardson, aullioroi 'Field. Duiiireon infl l-v,-- nt ■ i ', ".^ '^\ ibo/— 18b7.— 
and uul lur s;ile ,n tlie bookstore.. Resident" oranvS?a?e,n rhV ii:.. i '^ ^^ subscnpt.on only, 
df«. the Publishers, and an Agent will call upon theL U>"ondes,nng a copy should ad- 

'Beyoxd THE Mississippi' records years of life, experience and travel in Kansas 
during the Border Ruffian Wars— in Missouri, visiting the Iron Mountains and Lead 
Mines— in the Indian Territory, among the civilized Choctaws, Clierokees and Chicka- 
saws— over the Great Staked Plain of Northern Texas, and the famed Desert known 
as 'The Journey of the Dead Man'— among the quaint Oriental scenes of the old 
Mexican city of El Paso— alone over solitary mountain trails through the country of 
hostile savages— in New Mexico with Kit Carson the renowned trapper— seven times 
across tlie great plains to the Rocky Mountains— with Horace Greeley among buffa- 
loes, Indians, and Colorado gold miners— with Hon. Schuyler Colfax, Lieut. Gov. 
Rross, of Illinois, and Samuel Bowles, of The SiwiyigfieU {Mass.) Republican, through 
Colorado, Nebraska, Dacotah, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington Territory, 
and Vancouver Island— afterward alone in Montana and Idaho, then home to New 
York, via ocean and isthmus— then again to Kansas and Nebraska, to see the Pacific 
Railroad. 

Pioneer f.ife, its wild excitements, its enterprise, its terrible affrays and exercise of lynch law-the 
sudden growth of cities and States on the deserts and in the mountains-existence and experience 
anions the gold diggings, hundreds of miles beyond civilization-Mormonism and Polygamy in 
U(ah-.qnartz mining, which now yields us One Hundred Millions of dollars per annum \u >:pecie 
and fifteen years hence will produce Five Hundred Millions-great Natural Curiosities, of which 
there are more in Western America than on all the globe beside. 

The Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas-pictured rocks-lakes among the clouds- hun- 
dreds of mineral springs-Great Salt Lake and its basin-the Snake River cataract of Idaho-the 
Great Falls of the Missouri-the unapproached scenery of Columbia River-the boundless forests 
and beautiful Puget Sound of far Washington Territory-Pike's Peak-Long's Peak-Mount Shasta— 
Mount H..od-Monnt Rainer-the Gelsers Big Tree Groves, and the stupendous Yosemite Valler 
01 California-the National Pacific Railroad which, now employing twenty-five thousand men and to 
be completed in three years, will make our country the highway of nations, New York the world's 
metropolis, and San Francisco the second city in America. 

All these themes are treated by Mr. Richardson's graphic pen, and depicted by the most spirited 
and faithful illustrations which American Art can produce. 

CONDITIONS. 

d^d^nc^n^.J'J}}''^^^^^'' '^'' 5^^' •■''y'e of typography, on good paper, and contain orrr^re hun. 
nirf.irH;\r ^^f-afflmore than two hundrfd spirited ilUistralions, (including sixteen full page 

te furnished fVf.K'"*'-;^'""'"" .^/''^'^ ^"° >" ''*' °-f Engrai-h.gs on previous pages. It will 
oe lurnisiied to Mibscnbers. paijable on delivery. •= o i- j ^ 

hi neat and substantial Cloth Binding," sprinkled edge, for $ 

" " gilt edge, 

In plain Leather, sprinkled edge, (Library Style,) for 

Agents Wanted, Apply to AMERIOAIf PUBnSHING CO., Hartford, Conn. 



mmi ©ff THi iiBiiit 

ITS ORIGIN, TRUTH, AND DIVINITY. 

deaths. Tbc Lile "f 0^"''^^ H.^lSc. iK^^ «"= """■'" "'"* 

f,sri„Tcrp?eVeSv\'rjcro'Vu"-c!t^^^^^^ 

EMB^ciNG A TERM OP OVER 3000 YEARS. 

BY J. E. STEBBINS. 
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'^'°"''iruV^U°ETT0TuBScSBEE3 AT THE FOLLOWING PKICES^ ^^ 

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NEWlUARTXmOTOGR^ " 

A^BWH ®41Iim¥ BlB^Ej 

With Marginal References, Apochrypha Concordance an Index, 
FamilvRecord, The Psalms of David in Metre 

raiuiijf ivs/v.wi-1 , „ ., . , Tnhl^nf Scrinture Heights and ■)Jvea»- 

A Table of Te^rU; a TahU of Kindred 'V^^J'^^^^IJ^'f^^^^J^pSl^lge, in the Old 

notice't^oWb3Gribers. 

„T; . T l^T^^7 AmILY bible, whieh we take pleasure m prosentlng to 
Our NEW pnOTt)GRAP II ^LBLM FAMILY Bi^^^^ f.^t^r.in Bible muk.n,' which 

the Diiblic through our traveling azents, lor us ^1. paniilv Bible, with its reoonl of Mar- 

at once commenru Itself to eve y home an "^'i^'^^^Vg^l fjf,„^4oUl treasure, and the present e.luton 
riages, Births and Deaths, has ever be«°^^;'^tement^iu album f,^m by which Family Portraits rna^ 
has in connection with us register, »« ^rran emeni purports to ho. a Family Bible. It is 

we anticipate for it a large and rapid ^»|^__^_____ 

Theworkwinh.prlnted?nSSiSv|.^^^^^ ,T 50 '" 

surstautially bound in leather, embossed sides, .lit ^^^1^ ^^^"^^^,^^ ^g Photographs, at 8.50 
do do do do do do 

^rair WrlSoAN PmiS^a 00.,Hartfora,0«. 



THE GEEAT REBELLION. 

A HISTORY OF THE 



Embracing an authentic account of the whole contest, 

BY HOJSr. J, T. HEADLEY, 

Author of -Napoleon and his Marshals," "Washington and his Generals,"^ " Sacred 

Mountains," d-c. 

IM ENG-LISH AND GERMAN. 

This Great "Work commences with the firsf nnthrr.it «*• +k 
and truthful account of the terrible stru^^irto its vPrvl/ ^^e war, and gives a full 
ports of Generals Grant and Sherinan! ^^ ^ ^"^^ """"^ ^^°''"S ^^^^^ the Re- 

Noting each important and intere^tino- event with tiin« nr.A ^i ^ -^ 
with perfect accuracy, statino- onlv as f i^trthr, '„ ♦. • ^'^^'^^'^ P'ace of its occurrence, 
this work cannot failVere on1r°?i\\ acce„ 'd^^^^^ 'ire well authenticated 

as such will prove of immense value to Us^ ,osi«r>i ^ standard authority, and 
no library wi\l be eonsideredtomXte^^UhCral-oiV"^^ ^^'^ 

Scenes, and Portraits oYgffiLt p^Se^^tYn'tKar"''^'^^' '' Military and Kav.l 
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^^ Hartford, Conn. 

THE SECRET SERVICE, 

The Field, The Dungeon and The Escape. 

By ALBERT D. RICHARDSON, (Tribune Correspondent.) 
The above work embraces the entire narrative of 
Mr. RICHARDSON'S Unparalled Experience for Four Years 

h.'^ufoTA^^^.Sn'rlrA'JJh^^^^^^^^^^ tl^e outbreak of the War. 

III. His thrillingcai.ture while running the ban. r^snf wo years of the Rebellion. 

more than half his\o,'n,.anions ve7e either kllW^unce^^ Mississ.pp. Kiverat Vicksburg, where 

iV. "IS confinement lor twenty months in spvonilift-.,. . » V." v i t. . 

V. His escape and almost Miraculous Journerhvnf.i)//''^^^ ^r.'.""'- 
Union Mounta'in^rs of North Carolina a rTeYneLe^tt'ou^^^ T "'!'"• "'^'^ ^^ ^'^''^'^'^ '^^^ 

it abounds in stirring events never beforp^fv.nfi.r^ v • ""'^i^ country to our lines, 
theescpe, which have not yet am^arod =ncudifJa^lt.h """""^ details of 

Pilot, and the ''UNKNOWN GOIDE " in thrnirlZ^'^^^^^^^^ *^r^^i^- '^'^ ^''^'"'^ Union 

Eichardsonandhiscon.radrsbyniihtou'tof aK.t?fmb°^^^ ^^^y' ''^'' ^'''"'''-'^ ^• 

the FACT, INCIDENT AND KOMANCE OF TIT? wIp/k "'"'''' '"''^'•"t, containing more of 

The work is oEFered in the beTstvle of tvnLrln)^ 3 'T '^"^ "^^'^ '''^'"^ "^^^ yet apj.eured. 

J'age^ and Nineteen Engravings. ^ 'yP°&™Pby, on good paper, and contains oi^e/- 500 Octavo 

Price, Cloth, (neat and substantial ) - 

Library Stylo, (Leather) Sprinkled Ed-'es - *?-^ 

The book is published in the German language, 'same styles of binding, a"nd saml prices'"'' 

Agents Wanted. Apply to AMEEIOAN PUBLISHING CO., 

Hartford, Conn. 



PERSONAL HISTORY OF 

ILLUSTRATED WITIt 

Twenty-five New and Elegant Full Page Engravings, 

Tt, qtPnl and Wood anion- \vhich are two of General Grant, by the bc>t Artists in the coiin- 
tr3 Als'o Fac-^imi c^ol litiie Documents, Public and Private, tbe famous Lucouditioual-bur- 
rS^^deit a"d oJL^r eilly ilueresting and iiiportant Letters,, trom Originals intrusted to the au- 

tlior by General Grant and his irieuds. ^.r^^-r 

THE 3IOS^T POPXJL^Tl BOOlv OF THE ©EASOP^. 

This volume contains many Documents and Letters of the Highest Importance, relating to 
CivuIndSKy Matters, SINCE THE WAR, which have never before been made public. 

By ALBERT^TbICHARDSON, 

AXTTHOE OF 'TIELD, DUNGEOK, AND ESCAPE," AND "BEYOND THE MISSISSIPPI." 

AUTHENTIC, AUTHOrTzEdTn D APPROVED. 

WHtte>i with the knowledge, consent, and full coacurrence of the illmtrwm Genera. 

cription price is, , , , t^ , 

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By JUNIUS HENRI BROWNE 

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\lrife>- ha4% 1-- drawn upon and conce^ ^^ ^^^ .^,^^, 

Rellecting every phase «* M«t'°P° l,"^" 'f^^'l^Yo ., ^A and customs of every class 

estinglocalitiesandpeciiliarinstimtiousot JNtw 101^^^^^ contest for 

of its'people ; their modes and lia it^^ of ''f^ • l^J^i^,"^ '^^Vtost i evealing scenes of wickedness 
wealth existing among them, and ho^^ i*,?'^f"',.^^;"''^nj°'the laid for the unwary ; in fact, 

and of misery; exposing the tricU of the di>l^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^..^1^ ^ f„,i. 

in its great value as a book of profit and amusement. 
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THE 

lew Pilgrta^i Progresi 

BY 

The well known "Moralist of the Main," and world- 
renowned Humorist, whose writings and lectures have 
been the source of so much gratification to all who have 
read or heard them, we are happy to announce as being 
prepared, and will be issued early in the Spring, with nearly 

200 New and Appropriate Engravings 

This is a narrative of the trip of 

With her "Pilgrim Party," to the Holy Land, 

With a description of the Countries, Nations, Incidents 
and Adventures, seen and passed through by the party, as 
they appeared to the eyes of the 

Dijferlng 3l€(terktlly in several j^oints 
from descriptions tisually given. 

We can promise a rich treat to the readers of this vol- 
ume. 

Territory given to Agents March 1st. 



)'?9 



Agents Wanted. Apply to AMEEIOAN PTJELISHING CO., Hartford, Conn. 
LB JL '06 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 221 561 5 



r .•'.» ■ 









r^%^:':, 



